Word: boel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...farm commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel downplayed the changes to Europe's Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) she unveiled Tuesday as a mere "health check". Her proposals, she said, are "all about freeing our farmers to meet growing demand and respond quickly to what the market is telling them...
...Fischer Boel, a dogged Dane who owns three farms of her own, is undaunted by the odds. She says reform is vital if the E.U. is to keep up with changing global markets. "It aims to simplify, streamline and modernize the CAP and give our farmers the tools to handle the new challenges they face, such as climate change," she said...
...part, E.U. Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel protests that biofuels had become a scapegoat. She said that the E.U. uses less than 1% of its cereal production to make ethanol, and while two-thirds of Europe's rapeseed crop is used for biodiesel, this accounts for only about 2% of global oilseed demand...
...case, the Commission plans to tighten the criteria to ensure that biofuel production is sustainable, including a stipulation that it represent a 35% carbon saving compared to oil. Fischer Boel sets much store on the shift from first wave of biofuels (made from wheat, maize, colza, sugar beet etc) to second generation (leaves, straw and pond algae). If she's right, it could maintain the initial promise of biofuels. But as the chorus of critics grows louder, Europe's ambitious goals for filling its tanks with the fruits of the fields are looking more and more like pipedreams...
...past experience is any guide, this reform will likely be watered down once national governments and farming lobbies go to work on it. But for Fischer Boel, at least, the worst excesses of the E.U.'s farm policies have become so indigestible that it is time to take them off the menu...