Strong agriculture lobby needed

One can, in two words, describe the agricultural policy proposed by the party in government as a hopeful policy and that proposed by the party in opposition as a negative policy.

It is a hopeful policy because the government is primarily, if not exclusively, pegging the future of Maltese agriculture to the "ever declining" European funds, with little or grossly belated attention to the necessary restructuring of the industry. The opposition is hopeless in this field and all it can propose is negative bygone policies of protectionism.

The other stakeholders in this industry, that is the farmers themselves, could well be described by a symbiosis of the two terms: "hopeful-negative". Hopeful because they have long abdicated their role in policy-making, leaving it to the various creatively sterile administrations and negative because they are unable to shed the comfort of unsustainable protectionism. Contrary to what happens in the field of agriculture in most developed countries where farming lobbies themselves dictate policies to administrations, in Malta a concerted bottom-up effort is disappointingly missing. 

The discussion of the safeguard clause is a comprehensive picture of agriculture discourse in Malta. Farmers (and conveniently the opposition) accuse the government of deceit on the application of the safeguard clause. The truth, in my opinion, is that in the run-up to the referendum the government actually did exaggerate the safety features of the safeguard clause at least as much as the opposition exaggerated the fate of farmers following accession.

The farmers themselves, because they lacked (and still do) a common front, where unable to look objectively at the issue and put the fantasies of both parties to order.

Unless farmers are willing to unite, beyond purchasing cooperatives, agriculture in Malta faces a bleak future. If a strong agricultural lobby fails to materialise, the agriculture ministry (under whichever administration) will continue to be a weaker picture of what it was a day before until it may be too late in the day for decent policy making.

Agriculture in Malta urgently needs a creative, effective and modern policy framework to ensure its survival in a globalised market. The Common Agricultural Policy will not save Maltese agriculture, however it is definitely a useful tool in the process. Protectionism is a non-starter.