Welcome to Sharp Talk, the regular podcast of E-Sharp Magazine.

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This is Paul Adamson, and I'm in conversation with Phil Hogan.

Phil Hogan is the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

Phil, I'd like us to talk about three or four things in the course of this podcast.

You're obviously in charge of the Common Agricultural Policy, so I'd like your take on how the

CAP, as it's called, is evolved over the since the late 70s or the 80s to where we stand now.

The fact that there's a a new maybe budget negotiation around

the corner, multi-annual budget negotiation, and what are your kind of prognostics for that?

And then last but not least, Brexit. Obviously, Ireland is very concerned about Brexit and I'd like

to talk to you about that. So first things first. How has the CAP evolved in the past 40 years?

You know, people have in their mind, you know, this image of all the rhetoric in some of the anti-European media,

especially in the UK, of, you know, Butter Mountains and wine lakes and the rest of it,

is how much of a caricature is that?

Well, I suppose a common agricultural policy, Paul, started out in 1962,

was a policy to help people to overcome the ravages of the Second World War

where people were starving in many countries in the European Union. We hadn't enough food,

believe it or not, to be able to feed all of the citizens of Europe. That might find

that hard to believe today when we see such high quality food and plenty of it.

And we can even export.

We're the largest exporter of food now in the world for the first time in the last year.

And we have great traceability.

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