"The wheat supply in the European Union"
The European Flour Millers' association held on 6 April 2011 the latest edition of its conferences in Brussels. The supply of wheat is a permanent concern for EU flour millers and is also high on the agenda of EU decision-makers in the context of the discussions on the CAP post-2013 but also the revision of the MiFID Directive.
“One of the European Flour Millers' key challenges will be securing regular supply of sustainable agricultural raw materials for a rising world population on limited arable land and facing the impact of climate change” said the association President, “Our industry needs greater coherence between EU policies affecting supply, more incentives for research and innovation but also safety nets to deal with increasingly unpredictable and extremely volatile market conditions”.
The need for a strategic vision concerning EU wheat supply in a global market
- "The wheat challenge" by Mr Herman Versteijlen, Director for Economics of agricultural markets & Single CMO at the European Commission (DG Agriculture)
- "Long-term prospects for the Common Agricultural Policy: are product safety nets still relevant?" by Mr Tassos Haniotis, Director for Economic Analysis, Perspectives and Evaluations at the European Commission (DG AGRI)
- "Price volatility in wheat and maize markets: fundamentals and/or speculation?" by Mr Josef Schmidhuber, Deputy Director for Statistics Division at FAO
- "Wheat trade outlook - the global perspectives" by Mr Stefan Vogel, Chief Economist at Toepfer International
- "Wheat sustainability and the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition double pyramid" by Mr Luca Ruini, Director for Health, safety environment and energy at Barilla Group
- "Climate change: can wheat beat the heat? The future of wheat breeding in Europe" by Mr Richard Summers, Head of European cereal breeding at RAGT Seeds UK
The conference that attracted more than 100 participants, representatives from business and from European institutions, provided a valuable platform for discussion and highlighted key elements for action for the flour milling industry – in particular the need for a strategic vision of supply of wheat at EU level in a global market.