Richard Schenk has an interesting Brussels Signal piece on EU meddling with the production of what was once abundant in Europe - food.
Well worth reading for Schenk's key point - the consequences of equating progress with producing less. It ties in with the the EU-Mercosur trade agreement.
Europe made food abundant. Then Brussels decided to produce less
The Common Agricultural Policy emerged from a Europe that remembered war scarcity. Europe created abundance so successfully that it eventually forgot why producing food mattered.
Farmers even became targets of resentment, supposedly bathing in EU subsidies. Yet agricultural support declined substantially relative to the European economy. Common Agricultural Policy spending fell from 0.54 per cent of EU GDP in the 1990s to 0.36 per cent in 2023, according to the Commission’s own figures.
Environmental protection is not the problem. Farmers have an obvious interest in fertile soil, reliable water and a functioning natural environment.
The problem begins when environmental ambitions become detached from producing food, or become entangled with a degrowth philosophy in which producing less is itself treated as progress.
Europe made food abundant. Then Brussels decided to produce less
The Common Agricultural Policy emerged from a Europe that remembered war scarcity. Europe created abundance so successfully that it eventually forgot why producing food mattered.
Farmers even became targets of resentment, supposedly bathing in EU subsidies. Yet agricultural support declined substantially relative to the European economy. Common Agricultural Policy spending fell from 0.54 per cent of EU GDP in the 1990s to 0.36 per cent in 2023, according to the Commission’s own figures.
Environmental protection is not the problem. Farmers have an obvious interest in fertile soil, reliable water and a functioning natural environment.
The problem begins when environmental ambitions become detached from producing food, or become entangled with a degrowth philosophy in which producing less is itself treated as progress.
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