That Crazy Agricultural Policy: Part I
With Rainy Day preparing to head for the hills, this might not be the most politic moment to launch an attack on the European Union's farm policies. After all, we'll be dining off the fat of the land soon and one doesn't want to be accused of subversion down on the farm when it comes to farm subsidies. Still, I've got to shout STOP! because I'm paying for this perverse farce! So, here goes and we'll begin with a reading from Catch-22, the unofficial guidebook to the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP):
"His specialty was alfalfa and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow... He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the county. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise. 'As ye sow, so shall ye reap,' he counseled one and all, and everyone said, 'Amen.' "
BACKGROUNDER: Here's an item from yesterday's news: "A limited trade deal has been reached in Hong Kong after developing countries approved a European Union offer to end farm export subsidies by 2013." Actually, the adjective there should not be "limited" but "shoddy", and we should note that we're talking "farm export subsidies" as opposed to farm subsidies. Although we should be grateful that world trade wasn't completely run off the rails because of the CAP, it is a fact that the WTO talks in Hong Kong came just a few days after the wearying EU budget negotiations, which were also held hostage to the CAP. "Under the agreement there will be a fundamental review of EU spending — including the farm subsidies France has clung to — starting in 2008, but no change in the level of payouts until 2014." What's this with 2013 and 2014? That's what you get when you enter the iniquitous world of the CAP: confused.
FARMYARD SCENE: Rainy Day woke up yesterday to snow and the sound of Bayerischer Rundfunk with its Sunday morning radio segment titled "Aus Landwirtschaft and Umwelt" (From agriculture and environment). To sum it up, the report dwelt on Bavarian farmers who were in dire financial straits because the state government was late in making "Ausgleichszahlungen" (compensation payments). Significant sums were involved, €40,000 in one case. One of the farmers had 11 (!) children and was at his wit's end because he hadn't been "paid". Given the dishonour that's befallen farming, none of these individuals were being "compensated" for doing anything useful, of course, unless you consider overproduction of food and the trimming of hedges useful. The fact that the tardy (tawdry?) payments were to come from the state's "cultural landscape program" says how Orwellian our animal farms have become.
Tomorrow, more of this ludicrousness and a farmyard scene that produced the following brilliant commentary: "The working population of Europe, like their distant ancestors in Sumer and Ur of the Chaldees, apparently believe that, for their own wellbeing, they must give some of their hard-earned cash to a caste of priests and functionaries, in whose survival, somehow, the survival of society as a whole is bound up. Or, if you don't like the anthropological line, perhaps it is more like the government having decided that the entire population of Europe should employ several million gardeners to keep the grass down. We have entered the age of state-sponsored mowing." Rainy Day says: Let the bloody grass grow!
