Apple-growing Pole feels squeeze

By Oana Lungescu
Brussels correspondent

Marcin spends more time in his office than in the orchard

As part of our ongoing season "Who Runs Your World," the BBC took a Polish apple-grower to meet the movers and shakers of Brussels.

Aid for farmers has become one of the most hotly disputed issues in the European Union.

When Poland was one of the 10 countries to join the EU last year, six million farmers feared they would be put out of business by their heavily-subsidised colleagues in western Europe.

But it has been a good year for Polish farmers.

Those who feared the worst from EU membership are now the first to harvest its fruit. With more than 1.6bn euros (£1.1bn) in subsidies so far, farmers have practically doubled their income.

Marcin Hermanowicz grows apples on 30 hectares of land, in a region south of Warsaw often described as Europe's largest orchard.

This year, Marcin has already received 1,000 euros in subsidies and is hoping to get thousands more for new investments. But it is only a fraction of what western European farmers have been getting for half a century. And it comes with bureaucratic strings attached.

"We feel more controlled," says Marcin.

His pet hate is an EU decree that something with a diameter smaller than 55 millimetres cannot be defined as an apple and therefore cannot be sold as such.

In Marcin's opinion, this is silly. He should know. The Hermanowicz family has grown apples for 100 years.

In the noisy packing room next to the sun-dappled orchard, thousands of red apples file past on a conveyor belt.

Red tape

They are washed, then brush-dried, before being packed by a team of women in white coats.

It won't be easy to compete with our colleagues in the west and with farmers in other parts of the world Marcin Hermanowicz

Marcin's father and brother help sort the apples and make sure that the green boxes labelled "Fresh Fruit" are ready in time to be loaded onto a waiting lorry.

Within a day or two, the fruit will arrive in British, Scandinavian or Russian supermarkets, and even as far as Bahrain.

Marcin - a sociology graduate in his late twenties who speaks fluent English and German - belongs to a new generation of Polish farmers.

Decisions in Brussels are now a focus of his working life and most of his time is spent not in the orchard, but in a small office next to the packing room, where he keeps seven big folders bulging with EU forms and other documents.

To find out who makes the rules for his business, we brought Marcin to Brussels to meet the European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel.

Commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel wants to make things simpler

In her large office on the ninth floor of the European Commission headquarters, she tells Marcin her husband also grows apples in Denmark. But fruit production in her country went down after Poland started exporting on a large scale.

Global competition

Now Poland itself is facing stiff competition from China and countries in the southern hemisphere, like New Zealand and Chile. The commissioner can protect European farmers with subsidies, import tariffs and quotas.

But, as she prepares for a key meeting of the World Trade Organisation in December, she warns Marcin that Europe will have to open up to more free trade. She promises however to trim some of the rules and regulations.

"I've started a simplification project," the commissioner says, "because I want farmers to do what they're best at doing rather than sit in an office."

"That's good news," says Marcin.

But how about farm subsidies? he asks.

With the accession of many east European countries last year, and Romania and Bulgaria set to follow soon, the same budget will have to be divvied up among more farmers than before.

Therefore, Mariann Fischer Boel concludes, the payments will go down over the next period.

The commissioner's talk of cuts and reforms is not going down well in the European Parliament.

Janusz Wojciechowski, a Euro-MP for the Polish Peasants Party, tells Marcin he is worried about the future of European agriculture.

"There is strong pressure to reduce subsidies and the Polish representatives are afraid this is not the good direction," he says.

But Polish politicians and EU commissioners can only go so far in protecting farmers from the chill wind of global competition.

On average, half of European farmers' income comes from Brussels. Fruit-growers get only indirect aid for new investments, so increasingly, their world is ruled not by the EU, but by the world market.

Hard future

Marcin's last stop is a Belgian orchard, an hour's drive east of Brussels. With the harvest in full swing, he is here to talk to Florent Geerdens, a farmer for 25 years.

"We are growing too many apples in the world and everybody wants to sell them in Europe," Florent sighs. "Everybody in South Africa, in New Zealand, in South America is producing apples and bringing them to Europe."

Low-cost countries like Poland are a particular headache for Belgian producers.

But Florent takes a philosophical stance. Consumers will go for quality, he argues, so in a free world, we must simply try to be better than our competitors.

For Europe's farmers, the rich pickings may soon be over.

In Poland, it is feared that one-third of the farms will not be able to compete, even with EU subsidies.

Marcin is confident he will make his business bloom, but he is heading back home feeling less optimistic than when he came.

"I know now that the subsidies will be lowered, that the protection of the European market won't be as strong as it is today," he concludes. "So, especially for the Polish farming sector, it won't be easy to compete with our colleagues in the West and with farmers in other parts of the world."

It has taken Polish farmers huge efforts to join the European club. Now they see it is not the safe haven they were hoping for.