November 19, 2012
The European Commission’s proposals to cut back on the biofuels section of its renewable energy policy is a wise move. In an atmosphere of undoubtedly increasing tension over global food security such policies operated without flexibility are inevitably going to be a political liability. To the politically simple-minded converting food and feed grains into motor… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
November 12, 2012
The current wrangle among EU agriculture ministers over the post 2014 agricultural budget is merely the latest act of the endless CAP fantasy which has been running since the early 1960s. It reflects the continual patching up of a policy which was fatally flawed from its very beginning. The CAP began as an attempt to… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
April 20, 2011
The farm lobby’s supporters in the European Parliament are clearly determined on only minimal adjustments to the common agricultural policy in return for guarantees of the continuation of the €55 billion a year largesse from the taxpayer. Deliberations in the Agriculture Committee indicate strongly that MEPs will not support the Commission’s very modest plans for… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
April 12, 2011
If governments pay subsidies on or protect a productive process then it is inevitable that the price of the factors involved in that production will rise. In the case of agriculture the most obvious example is the effect of subsidies on the price of land. In their most extreme form, subsidy systems have the effect… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
April 6, 2011
It is now generally accepted that if an expected world population of 9+ billion by 2050 is to be adequately fed, world food production has to be massively increased. Estimates vary on how much, the actual figure depending on the extent that growth in the ‘emergent’ economies triggers a switch to a more animal product… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
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, agricultural productivity, food security, scientific research |
March 23, 2011
It was entirely predictable that EU farm ministers would respond to the European Commission’s post 2013 CAP reform proposals by agreeing on a policy direction which would ensure that there can be no radical change in the Union’s €50+ billion a year common agricultural policy. What was however surprising, even to hardened farm council watchers,… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
March 16, 2011
The most recent meetings of the European Union’s farm ministers have given a pretty clear indication that any changes which may take place in the common agricultural policy are unlikely to be more than cosmetic. After much wrangling in the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) and in the Council of Ministers itself, a completely anodyne… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
March 7, 2011
Retail prices of food, according to a UK bank, have increased almost twice as much as they should have done as a result of recent food commodity price increases. Prices to consumers have increased far more than indicated by the small proportion of raw material cost in the total cost of processing and delivering. An… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
March 4, 2011
The European Commission’s approach to yet another upcoming reform of the common agricultural policy is largely devoted to the continuation of the current policy with a few added concessions to green pressures on the side. This approach is increasingly irrelevant at this stage in the development of European agriculture and in an increasingly unstable world… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
February 23, 2011
Improved food security has long been a justification for protecting farmers. In the long history of European agriculture policy flinging up tariff walls and subsidising production has nearly always been the governmental response to the prospect of potential food shortage. The evidence that such actions generally result in a reduction of production outside the protected… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
Commentary on European developments from the perspective of long term professional interest in European and international trade, agriculture and food policy, nurtured over three decades spent in Brussels observing and analysing the development of the CAP.
