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EU Proposal: Shift Farming Subsidies To Science
smitty777 writes "There is a proposal in the EU budget which would provide a 45% increase in technology and innovation spending for the 2014-2020 time period. Interestingly, some of the increase from $79B to $114B would come from the controversial farm subsidies program, the Common Agricultural Policy. The article states ... 'While some scientists and observers feel optimistic that the proposal will pass, one stated that "it is extremely unlikely that the member states will agree to anything exceeding this, so we should regard it as a ceiling" on the eventual research budget.'"
You write as if what you do is science.
It's not.
Quack.
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BMO
Imagine what we could get done if we weren't spending billions per month on war.
Our problems with the budget have nothing to do with unemployment, welfare, SSI, or unions, or whatever monster that the Republicans say is hiding under the bed. It has everything to do with the fact that we're pissing money away on wars that we /did not and are not paying for/. (Cut taxes while fighting a war? Just who the fuck is claiming fiscal responsibility here?)
We give science short shrift here when it is /undisputed/ by people on both sides of the aisle (except for nutcases like Palin) that basic and applied science give valuable dividends to society as a whole.
And don't tell me that the "free market" and companies will take up the slack. PARC no longer exists and neither does Bell Labs. R&D has been the first thing to be cut by bean counters in the last 30 years.
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BMO
The "farming lobby" is more about large megacorps than it is about real farmers. That's the real problem here. If you cut out the farm subsidies then some very large corporations will be hammered right in the pocketbook. They aren't going to take that lying down. Neither will Republicans.
This is all about "big business". Using the word "farm" to refer to any of this is a huge and misleading misnomer.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
What ever happened to the concept of just ending a subsidy? Period. There will always be hands out for free money. Science, space, the arts, whatever. Why don't we just say, "We're ending the farming subsidy and we're aren't going to give anybody else this money. We're just going to pay down some national debt with it. Or maybe just give the money back to the taxpayers in the form of a tax reduction for the lower classes."
The farming lobby is one of the strongest in Congress. You'll have every midwestern senator and his brother screaming holy bloody murder before debate even begins. And that's not to mentioned that Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) basically owns half of them (you think they're just going to roll over and give up billion of $ in subsidies to a bunch of eggheads without a nasty fight?).
You'd have better luck getting cuts to oil subsidies through Texas's and Alaska's objections. And even that is nigh impossible.
Suprisingly the US Congress and midwestern senators and the like have very little say in the EU.
Seriously, far far better to spend money on R&D rather than providing subsidies that push planting corn, while having other subsidies that says to take fields out of production. Makes zero sense. We would be better doing the R&D and then keeping the companies local rather than selling them to Chinese companies (that makes ZERO sense).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They probably have their own versions of ADM and Con Agra.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Even with my strong libertarian leaning I realize there is a social benefit to perusing real science and innovation.
Time to offend someone
The CAP is badly run, inefficient, but a good idea. The EU are very bad at publicising the true aim of the CAP, which is food security. Most people seem to think it is just some sort of political back-hander to farmers, but the truth is that without it European farmers could not compete on an open market. This would result on reliance on countries in Africa, Asia, etc. for most of our food. When scarcities occur these countries may well impose a cap on exports. China and India have both limited rice exports in the past. Also if countries know that we are dependent on them it becomes a political weapon. It is worth spending some money to ensure that we are not totally reliant on outside sources for food.
Now if they want to save money on inefficiencies in the implementation of the CAP and spend it on science I am 100% behind that, but if they want to rely on the world market for our food supply I think that is a dangerous idea.
The Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) was devised as a way to keep a strategic asset, the ability to produce food without depending on foreign powers, in spite of any economic pressure that could force farmers to abandon farming altogether and therefore squander the food production potential of the EU members. This is mainly achieved by a series of agricultural subsidies devised to keep farms afloat even when their production, in today's market, is far more expensive than any import food, particularly in the third world.
Knowing this, reducing CAP subsidies so that the money is directed elsewhere represents the destruction of europe's agricultural potential and the abandon of europe's objective of being self-dependent in terms of food production. Although investing in science and technology is always a good thing, doing it at the expense of being able to guarantee europe's basic needs isn't a smart move. It's literally betting the farm on the expectation that a boom in tertiary and quaternary industries will be enough to compensate the dependence on third-world countries, some of whom are run by despots, for the ability to get a meal. Just to put it in perspective, just think of a OPEC formed to control europe's food imports, and imagine the effect of a speculation attack on the price of food. It would be suicide.
And I don't even mention the lobbying for the agroindustry.
So no, don't expect this shift to occur. The CAP subsidies will keep on being directed to the farmers and science will be forced to get it's funding from somewhere else.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Farm subsidies in the US aren't a Republican or Democrat thing. The recent vote in the US senate to end ethanol subsidies shows it is more rural farm region versus coastal urban region thing. I blame Iowa for this since they have the first primary and all presidential candidates fall all over themselves to promise more corn, ethanol, and farm subsidies.
Time to offend someone
Really? You live in the city, right?
I sure know a lot of family owned farms here in east central Illinois that take the subsidy programs.
But, what do I know. I just hang out with farmers and own farmland of my own. I assure you I'm hardly a megacorp.
Yes, the large corporations like ADM and many others do large lobbying pushes, but they don't directly vote. In farm states (you probably call them fly-over states), the congress-critters often rely on the farm vote to keep their jobs.
Whether it should be that way is a different discussion, but the simple picture you paint is misleading at best.
Damn those US farmers, coming over here and stealing our EU farming subsidies.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
but the truth is that without it European farmers could not compete on an open market
So why does Britain still have agriculture - we don't get much in subsidies, It's mainly the French who get the lions share of the subsidies - that's the whole reason why Britain gets the big rebate and we all argue about all of this every budget.
I don't support a penny more to the EU - they tried to take over the military and have and extreme military expansionist policy last time they (and who is they?) wrote the so called 'constitution' - constitution my arse, corporate wet dream more like.
EU is a bad idea, it's not democratic, no-one has any idea who chooses and writes the laws, one MEP to millions of people is extremely undemocratic and unrepresentative and allows for corporate lobbyists to have more clout than ordinary citezens. Some laws have even been written in part by corporations on behalf of the unelected Commission who chose the laws. MEPs only get to vote on them and they are snowed under by a Commission with a law writing addiction out of control.
Citizens of Europe don't understand that their local gov'ts only decide on prison sentances and local taxation, everything else is decided by faceless unelected bureaucrats.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
food we bury in the ground (yes, really)
That's a good policy. We should always produce extra food and then bury the extra.
That way, when there's a drought, you just bury less food and no one starves, and prices stay relatively stable.
Food stability has to be balanced against food efficiency - not everything should be thrown to the free market.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Except that there IS a drought at the moment, in eastern Africa... I'm sure those folk would really appreciate all that food you're burying. Thanks.
They certainly would, but then this is not really germane to the conversation. If you take away the subsidy, there would be no food to bury. In short, they'd be in exactly the same situation.
Perhaps there is some way in which you could distribute excess food without crashing food prices, but that's another discussion entirely.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Good luck getting the food to the "people" and not the local warlord/junta/dictator without boots-on-the-ground military interdiction.
Governments can do good things. Just because you grew up in a time after government solved most of peoples' major problems doesn't mean you should now turn against government.
A hundred years ago, people were suffering under the lack of a social safety net, unregulated robber barons, unfair working conditions, and virtually no government investment in infrastructure and science. During the 1900s, we accomplished many things by careful, measured application of taxes, investment, and regulation. Many of these things are good; some of them are poorly designed and should be revised. If you and your kind succeed in repealing every regulation, tax, and investment, our society will collapse.
Sensible government investment and regulation should be supported, not railed against.