Stuart Agnew, the UKIP MEP and agricultural spokesman has criticised the European Union for 'three wasted years' discussing greening measures to tackle climate change.
The MEP addressed his critique to Cypriot Agriculture Minister Sofoclis Aletraris at the Agriculture and Rural Development Committee.
"I’ve sat through debates here for a good three years about the CAP and it is interesting to see how events have actually overtaken us" Agnew said.
"When I first came here, all I heard was 'we must tackle climate change' because summers were going to get hotter and drier and winters were going to get warmer and wetter. We farmers were going to have to do something about it. We were told we were going to have to take land out of production, that we were going to have to green everything."
Agnew pointed out that over the same period the situation in regard to grain stocks had changed from comfortable stocks across the world to serious shortages.
"And so, for three years we’ve been talking about tackling climate change and taking land out of production through EFAs, only to be met with reality, the fact that grain stocks are going down in the world and we should be producing a lot more."
There was a large level of discontent in the Committee about the CAP reform package. A motion to scrap the package was tabled and supported by eleven MEPs.
