| EU farm socialism further exposed |
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| Written by Richard Howard | |
| Tuesday, 13 March 2007 | |
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The absurdity of EU farm subsidies was exposed again today with a report in The Times that people who have never set foot on a farm are receiving thousands of pounds from taxpayers. Technically, the subsidies can only go to farmers, however, the definition of farmer has been relaxed so greatly over the years that to be classified as one, you now only need to own 1.7 hectares of land for a ten month period and you never even need to visit it. The situation arose because the EU gave farmers the automatic right to subsidies in order to reduce production. Many farmers then sold on these rights in order to retire or to buy new equipment. The rights to these subsidies are an extremely lucrative but risky investment and are so profitable that you can make 500% over 5 years and demand is outstripping supply by 5 to 1. Even though this perfectly legal misuse of the system has been brought to light now, there will be no change to the law until the next round of EU farm reforms in 2013. The situation was summed up perfectly by Neil O'Brien, the director of Open Europe: “This is the final reduction to absurdity of the Common Agricultural Policy. Only the EU could have created a situation where people who are not farmers are paid not to farm.” This story highlights the absurd workings of CAP. In a free market system, we would not be paying farmers not to farm and taxpayers would definitely not be footing the bill for subsidies that are being paid to people who have never set foot on a farm in their lives. If the EU opened up its agriculture markets and abolished CAP then market forces would halt over-production immediately. Unfortunately, it seems that CAP is so entrenched that some form of it will be around for the foreseeable future even if it creates situations like this one. |