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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (25925)	12/1/2007 8:48:18 PM
From: elmatador	Respond to of 217622

Was it the case of: talking and removing all doubts? I had a colleague -he was a sales manager- who used to say: "Seat quiet, don;t talk too much and try to look intelligent."

To: Maurice Winn who wrote (25925)	12/2/2007 7:32:38 AM
From: elmatador	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217622

France urges EU to boost food output to ease prices . Steep agricultural commodity inflation around the globe will continue to boost French food prices unless the European Union finds ways to ramp up output, ELMAT: Buy Farmland! Reuters Thursday November 29 2007 By Sybille de La Hamaide PARIS, Nov 29 (Reuters) - Steep agricultural commodity inflation around the globe will continue to boost French food prices unless the European Union finds ways to ramp up output, French Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier said on Thursday. Speaking on the sidelines of an annual meeting of French farm cooperatives in Paris, the minister also said he was "truly worried" about the European Commission's latest proposals to adjust the bloc's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). From grains to milk and meat, prices of agriculture products have surged this year -- a rise dubbed "agflation" by some economists -- buoyed mainly by tight stocks and surging demand from rapidly-developing countries. "This is a long-lasting trend. We will continue to see high commodities prices -- maybe not higher, but still high -- because there will be less offer than demand for a long time," Barnier told Reuters in an interview. "We should not let global price rises impact peoples' food consumption and lifestyles here, so we have to protect them against that," he added. The strategy should be carried out at EU level and be included in the Commission's so-called "health check" of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a series of proposed adjustments put forward earlier this month, he said. One of the proposals involves extending the abolition of set-aside, the portion of a farmer leaves fallow. This could put around four million hectares back into cultivation this year. WORRIES However, Barnier, who was a member of the European Commission from 1999 to 2004, when he was in charge of regional policy, said the CAP proposals may prove insufficient to meet the challenges facing EU agriculture. "I am truly worried about these proposals because they broadly lead to a dismantling of the tools we need," he said. "We cannot treat food the way we deal with other industrial products... We need to protect ourselves against existing risks, sanitary or ecological ones, but also against international speculation which we increasingly see on commodities (markets)." Barnier said he would ask the Commission to implement new market stabilisation, regulation and prevention tools. French consumers have expressed growing concern over declining purchasing power -- one of President Nicolas Sarkozy's main themes during his election campaign -- and often lay the blame on higher food prices. Barnier said food represented 14 percent of French consumer spending. "Within this spending a rise in commodities plays a small role," he said, noting that in the French baguette flour accounts for 4 percent of the price. (Editing by Michael Roddy)