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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.'"
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.