Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.