Foreword from the Chairman Dr. Franz Fischler

After 46 years in farming and farm policy, six years as Austria’s Minister for Agriculture, and a decade and two CAP reforms as the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, I firmly believe that in the 21st century farmers and other rural actors must raise and widen their personal and collective commitment to defend and improve their way of life.

Overall, I see Europe’s agriculture and rural development suffering from market failures, public budget cuts and public neglect. Food and feed, the environment and climate change are on an unsustainable path. In expanding production, Europe’s land managers have been providing insufficient environmental ‘goods’, such as habitats, species and cultural landscapes, and too many environmental ‘bads’, such as pollution of the atmosphere, soil and water. This is a sign of market failure. Europe needs to address these market failures and incentivise the provisions of public goods by land managers that would otherwise not be delivered.

To adapt the current support in order to prevent productivity drops and ensuring the provision of public goods is an absolute necessity as agriculture is the key sector for attaining food security in an environment of growing scarcity preserving the ecosystem and improving the rural environment. European farming must change to feed the world in a context of scarcity. Land managers need rules and funds to improve sustainability and the fight against climate change. For that, governments must concretely acknowledge the role of farming in biodiversity and carbon sequestration, and adapt current policies, regulations and finance.

Abolishing farm support would be a grave mistake leading to more farm intensification with greater neglect of the environment. However, farm payments need to be substantial and better targeted to produce more with less, increasing yields as well as sustainability. Agriculture must be given the means to become more multifunctional and ecological and notably do more to help reduce EU emission.

Even though agricultural support through Pillar 1 constitutes an important instrument to meet the Treaty objectives, in the view of the next CAP reform and the 2013 Budget and Policy Review, it is essential to relate direct payments, whose historical levels are related to production, more closely to the objectives favoured by society. EU structural funds need to be redesigned in order to make sure that the share of Rural Development Programmes are enhanced, whilst ensuring that Axis 1 and Axis 3 Projects are better targeted so as to tackle market failures, to reduce risks of harming the environment and to and deal with the climate change challenge the climate change challenge. Moreover, any additional EU responsibilities, particularly after 2013, are likely to imply expenditure cuts in existing EU budget lines. Agriculture and rural development will not be spared, as EU Member States try to diversify EU budgetary spending.

RISE’s policy activities try to combine forces with larger interest groups, notably NGOs, representing wider interests than ours, such as consumer organizations, nature and animal lovers, and economic operators in tourism, financial and other services, in order to improve rural life.

I have accepted to lead the RISE Board, because I passionately believe that private initiative needs further strengthening in order to promote and stimulate a living countryside in the spirit of the 2004 Cork Declaration.

While I sincerely hope that it will stimulate other such initiatives so as to establish the necessary critical mass for effective action, I urge all those interested in a living countryside to become more active, either by creating rural-oriented foundations similar to RISE, or by concretely supporting this foundation. The best way to do so is to send a token of your support by building up the Foundation’s capital account. Let me thank you in advance for your support. Every donor to the RISE Foundation will be listed as a “Friend of the RISE Foundation”.

Let RISE be your foundation for rural conservation and renewal. Europe’s countryside needs your support!