Page 4 - Economy_Local Development

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Chapter 1 Rural Development

1.1 The birth of MEC and CAP

The six countries that made up the European Common Market (MEC) had just emerged from the Second
World War, where the population had experienced situations of serious food shortages. At that time the
partners of the Roman agreement sent their agriculture ministers to Stresa, between 3 and 11 July 1958,
to decide what the MEC’s agricultural policy would be. The order of governments was one: to ensure the
certainty and abundance of supplies, whatever situation could pass through the world market. The very
hard rivalry between the USA and the USSR made it easy to foresee, in fact, difficulties in maritime transit:
the imperative was to ensure food for all Europeans . The CAP (Common or Community Agricultural
1
Policy) , from its inception, had set itself four objectives:
2

● to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community and to satisfy farmers through the in-
tervention price, the minimum guaranteed price for agricultural products set by the European Community.
The price of the product could not fall below this;
● to steer agricultural enterprises towards greater production capacity (limiting the factors of production,
increasing technological development and using better agronomic techniques);
● to stabilize the markets;
● to ensure affordable prices for consumers.

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/future-cap-whats-cooking-next-cap_en

1 https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politica_agricola_comune
2 https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/key-policies/common-agricultural-policy_en