In the wake of increasing market volatility and adverse weather conditions, newly re-elected Chairwoman of Copa and Cogeca Working Party Paola Grossi said a top priority is to put more focus on measures, such as insurance, to help protect farmers against risks.
Copa and Cogeca believe that farmers are facing increasing risks such as higher market volatility; greater exposure to new animal and plant diseases as well as more frequent poor weather conditions as a result of climate change.
Measures to help protect farmers against these risks is consequently becoming more important and essential to help stabilise EU farmers’ incomes which are only 50% of average incomes.
Speaking in Brussels today after her re-election, Chairwoman of Copa and Cogeca Working Party Chairman on risk management Paola Grossi said: “We need to intensify work on risk management.
“It’s crucial to ensure a coherent approach with the other working parties like cereals. We need to deepen innovation technology to help develop the measures further”.
Under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Second Pillar of Rural Development Policy a risk management toolkit is available for farmers and Ms Grossi aims to work on simplifying these measures and cutting red tape to make the measures more effective under the CAP simplification initiative.
Copa and Cogeca believe such tools must complement the existing system of direct payments and market management measures under the CAP, and not replace them, as these measures are vital to ensure a competitive and profitable EU agriculture sector.
We have also set up a new task force to further our work on this and to have more efficient tools to protect farmers against the upcoming challenges.
Ms Paolo Grossi is from the Italian farm organisation Coldiretti and will be supported by two Vice Chairpersons Ms Monica Sanz from the Spanish cooperative organisation Cooperatives Agro-Alimentarias and Mr Thomas Gehrke from the German farm group DBV for a two year mandate.
