ABSTRACT
Food security was an important concern in Europe in the early post-war period when the initial steps towards European integration were taken. European agriculture, with the exception of some regions in Northwest Europe, was technologically backward and faced significant structural problems. Calorie consumption was adequate (calorie availability in 1961 varied from 2,888 kcal/person/day in Germany to 3,194 kcal/person/day in France among the original six countries of the European Economic Community, the EC-6) (FAOSTAT 2013), but memories of food shortages in the immediate post-war period were still fresh in people’s minds.2 Growth in production of most commodities exceeded growth in consumption during the 1950s. Although the supply situation had greatly improved by the time the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957, the EC-6 remained a net importer of most basic foodstuffs. As many European countries faced balance of payments difficulties in those years, ensuring an adequate supply of food from domestic production was a political concern in many of the original member states. However, food security was not the only objective of agricultural policy in European countries in the post-war period. Probably more important was the existence of rural poverty and the fact that growth in farm incomes tended to lag behind the growth in non-farm incomes during the initial post-war decades. Protecting farm incomes was not a new objective of agricultural policy in Europe. There had previously been two waves of agricultural protectionism, one in the late nineteenth century in response to greater competition in grain and (with the development of refrigeration techniques) livestock markets, and the second in the 1930s in response to the collapse in demand during the great depression. Following the Second World War, governments continued to intervene extensively in agricultural markets, providing price supports and subsidies in order to implement income guarantees to farmers. Inevitably, both an objective and a consequence of these measures was to insulate national market and price developments in each country from developments in other countries. Removing
these national barriers and coordinating and harmonising the plethora of support measures in use in each country was a formidable barrier to including agriculture in the early stages of European integration. It was not inevitable that agriculture would be included in the European integration process. As Zobbe has highlighted, discussions on the integration of agricultural policy in Europe began immediately after the Second World War had ended.
