EU pledges millions to promote agriculture

The European Commission has pledged €38.9m in support of projects to promote European agricultural products to consumers in the face of a global open market, including organics, dairy, fruit and veg and honey.

The funding represents half of the total budget of €77.7m from programmes in 11 member states - Germany, France, the Czech Republic, Greece, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Hungary, Austria, Poland and the Portugal.

Mariann Fischer Boel, commissioner for agriculture and rural development, drew attention to the diversity of European agricultural products.

"In an open global market, we need to redouble our efforts to explain their benefits to consumers. It is not enough to produce excellent food and drink; we also need to get smart when it comes to marketing," she said.

"EU programmes of this sort can really help our producers in an increasingly competitive world."

The EU agriculture sector has undergone significant shifts with the introduction of the common agricultural policy (CAP). Most recent, CAP reform for the fruit and vegetable sector, aimed at making it more competitive, was voted through by the agriculture council last month.

The package is aimed at boosting competitiveness in the sector, bringing an end to the current CMO, which is based partly on providing support to producers on the basis of quantity delivered to the processing industry, and instead transferring to a single payment scheme.

It also aims to give  producer bodies more influence, safeguarding the environment and boosting consumption - all the while remaining budget neutral.

France's Nicolas Sarkozy has been particularly vocal about the interests of farmers since taking up his country's presidency earlier this year. In May he signalled that he would do all he could to protect them in negotiations over the Doha trade round, saying he would not allow support for European farmers to be cut, while their US counterparts were unaffected by parallel measures.

The €38.9m spend has been made available on an annual basis since 2001, and professional organisations are invited to make applications by November 30.

The money can go towards public relations, publicity or promotional efforts, in particular those aimed at "highlighting the advantages of EU products, especially in terms of quality, hygiene, food safety, nutrition, labelling, animal welfare or environment-friendliness of their production", said the Commission.