July 29, 2013
The end of what might be described as the bad old common agricultural policy based on expensively rigged markets was recently marked by what should be the final removal of export subsidies on agricultural commodities. For over fifty years these subsidies have been a major mechanism for maintaining high farm prices in the European Union.… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
April 12, 2013
Whatever governments may or may not agree on GHG emissions, the one thing that is likely is that average global temperatures will continue to rise. What is also likely is that the world’s food production capacity will be affected by the change that temperature rises will create. There is however no consensus on what the… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
February 26, 2013
The European Union’s biofuels policy is an outstanding example of the working out of the so-called ‘law’ of unintended consequences. At the time of the biofuels policy’s birth, the advantages of encouraging the conversion of food crops to ‘green’ fuel seemed obvious. In the mid-1990s Europe and the developed world generally were awash with surplus… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
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Climate Change, Environment, Food & Consumers , agricultural policy, biofuels, Climate Change, food prices, GHG emissions |
March 24, 2010
World meat production is not the major contributor to green house gas emissions claimed by certain sectors of the green and vegetarian movements . Experts at The UN food and Agriculture Organisation have conceded that earlier accusations of an 18 per cent share of total AGHG were considerably inaccurate. Writers of the FAO’s famous –… » read more
Posted by Brian Gardner
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CAP Reform, Climate Change, English, Environment, Food & Consumers, Sustainable Dev. |
March 2, 2010
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation has clearly had second thoughts on livestock production’s contribution to environmental degradation and climate change. In its report ‘Livestock’s Long Shadow’ published four years ago it uncompromisingly blamed the world’s beef, dairy, pig, poultry and sheep producers for making a major and too often unnecessary contribution to AGHG emissions… » 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.
