This is my MEP Robert Sturdy’s report following last week’s sitting in the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

He raises a good point about increased prices of fertilisers, many poor farmers are unable to afford it and this further exacerbates the global food crisis.

The prospect of travelling to Strasbourg for the week has never filled me with any great sense of joy, and this time was no different. After five consecutive weeks of staying in Brussels and the UK, I was beginning to get used to this somewhat less frantic rhythm of life. All good things come to an end though. So yet again MEPs, assistants and the like made the environmentally-unfriendly pilgrimage to the “official” European Parliament in France, spilling thousands of tons of carbon in the air so that the EU can continue with its pressing battle against climate change and greenhouse gases. Apparently pleasing the French is far more important than practising what we preach!

While federalist Eurocrats look to climate change as the 21st century justification for bringing European Member States even closer together, over the past year, we have been reminded why the European Union was formed in the first place – to produce sufficient amounts of food. Now, as food prices continue to rise, European politicians are starting to get a little nervous and it was no surprise that food security was a major issue for debate in plenary this week. Suddenly the importance of food is being reflected in the price and some are beginning to realise that Europe, with its favourable climate and land quality, has a moral duty to increase production. It seems we have come full circle, after decades of grain-mountains and wine lakes; we are now facing a situation similar to the period immediately after the Second World War.

Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform is being mentioned as the best possible way to confront this departure from the cheap food era and this is starting to reveal underlying frictions between Europe’s member states. France’s Agriculture Minister, Michel Barnier has hit out at people like me who want to use this upturn in market prices to pull farmers from the subsidy traps of yesteryear. Monsieur Barnier has shown why, despite all the rhetoric and propaganda of a unified Europe that spills out of Brussels, national interests are still very much in the minds of many a politician. It is no surprise that Monsieur Barnier has called for an increase in the CAP budget, when French farmers receive more subsidy than any other member state. This would be a major step backwards for UK farmers who now have a freedom to farm whatever they like according to market prices and demand. Rather than complicating the CAP even further, this would be a good time to get rid of so much of the red tape that has stifled European agricultural production over the years and let our farmers get on with producing food

It is not just the demand for food that is pushing up prices, it is the production costs as well. Oil prices are spiralling to new heights, hauling up prices for essential fertiliser ingredients such as phosphate, nitrogen and potash. Speaking in Parliament, I called upon Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson to stop the anti-dumping legislation on these products when they come into the European Union before being shipped out to those developing countries which need them so greatly. At the moment this legislation is forcing up fertilizer prices at an alarming rate; with all the negative press that biofuels have been receiving over the past few months, it is imperative that the bigger picture is looked at and that politicians and the public realise that food production is reliant on a wider range of factors – we cannot keep using biofuels as a scapegoat.

I’m not just referring to environment factors, but also political ones. Well governed countries tend to have a solid and sustainable agricultural sector. This is why I voted alongside my Conservative colleagues on several resolutions putting pressure on Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe to accept defeat and allow for the democratisation of a country which used to feed itself and half of Southern Africa, but is now home to millions of starving people.