Helen Gregory In her most forthright speech since becoming DEFRA secretary of state, Margaret Beckett warned farmers and food industry executives from across Europe this week that radical policy change was needed to secure the industry's future. Admitting that she had "an uncomfortable message for many" she told 500 delegates from 30 countries at the Congress of European Agriculture in Belfast: "We must break free of the one-size-fits-all uniformity of the CAP." She suggested following the working of the whole food chain and encouraging the spread of best practice through benchmarking and marketing initiatives. And added: "There are a range of new ideas and opportunities for farming to contribute to the public good and thrive and prosper, which lie outside conventional food production. But she warned that problems in the current CAP regime meant no-one in the food chain was happy. "The world will not wait ­ the status quo is not sustainable." Beckett said market distorting subsidies had broken the link between the farmer and his customer. "Only when farmers are in direct contact with their customers can messages from the market on issues like food quality be translated into production." Despite her strong words, Beckett insisted that Sir Don Curry's imminent Commission on the Future of Farming and Food was still needed to help develop domestic policy and shape the decisions that farmers had to make about their lives and businesses. Seated alongside EU agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler, she declared: "I believe that future policy must be based much more on providing a framework and then giving power back to the nations and regions of the EU to deliver non-distorting policies which make the best sense in relation to their situation in each region and in the light of local priorities. "I'm not suggesting we should abandon the level playing field ­ but we must have fair competition." She said the wider European public would no longer permit farming simply to carry on as before ­ let alone pay for it ­ whether through taxes or high consumer prices. And she warned there was no rosy future for an industry that was out of tune with its markets and called on agriculture to become market-oriented and consumer focused. l See p20 and Opinion, p22. {{NEWS }}