Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment she has made of the effect of the Common Agricultural Policy on the level of poverty among farmers in Africa.

In the past, the CAP ‘dumped’ EU surpluses on global markets through export subsidies. These export subsidies lowered prices for producers in the rest of the world and represented unfair competition with farmers, particularly in developing countries.

However, over time the CAP has reformed and negative impacts on producers in the rest of the world have been reduced. In the 1980s, export subsidies accounted for around one-third of the CAP budget, but during the last CAP period they represented only around one per cent of the CAP budget. Furthermore, the EU, along with other developed countries, recently committed to eliminating all export subsidies by 2020 as part of the February World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreement in Nairobi.

The EU also grants tariff-free access to its market to Least Developed Countries through the ‘Everything But Arms’ (EBA) agreement. Many of the countries covered by this agreement are in Africa.