Come back CAP all is forgiven? impending food crisis
Discussion
Listening to the Food Programme on R4 it paints a remarkably bleak picture of rising prices, low farmgate prices, Chinese consumption growth and associated gloom; it's mildly ironic that just as the implosion of the Eurozone may offer the best opportunity to bin the CAP, we might actually need it for real.
hidetheelephants said:
it's mildly ironic that just as the implosion of the Eurozone may offer the best opportunity to bin the CAP, we might actually need it for real.
I wouldn't have thought so: most farmers grumble about somethingmost of the time.
Adapting a famous quote from Bill Bryson: "Never ask a farmer a question that
can't be answered 'Another pint of Tetlys, please'".
The CAP has mostly been a disaster. It needed binning twenty plus
years ago, despite what the French farmers say.
dcb said:
hidetheelephants said:
it's mildly ironic that just as the implosion of the Eurozone may offer the best opportunity to bin the CAP, we might actually need it for real.
I wouldn't have thought so: most farmers grumble about somethingmost of the time.
Adapting a famous quote from Bill Bryson: "Never ask a farmer a question that
can't be answered 'Another pint of Tetlys, please'".
The CAP has mostly been a disaster. It needed binning twenty plus
years ago, despite what the French farmers say.
ts expensive french cheese.food is still quite cheap. What makes it look expensive now is that it was dirt cheap in 2007, then went up quite a lot in a very short space of time. Most of that is down to QE and investors piling into the commodities market to buy wheat futures and the like, just like the did with oil.
With the costs of inputs as high as they are efficiency is the name of the game. Large scale farming in the UK is nigh on impossible because people like the look of the countryside and its patchwork of small fields. These people are quite a powerful lobby group.
With the costs of inputs as high as they are efficiency is the name of the game. Large scale farming in the UK is nigh on impossible because people like the look of the countryside and its patchwork of small fields. These people are quite a powerful lobby group.
As a peasant farmer I would like to add my two pence worth.Food has never been cheaper for the masses as a percentage of average income in this country but of course in many impoverished third world countries that is not the case. When I started farming 27 years ago wheat was selling for £130 a ton.What is the price today? £140 a ton. Hardly rampant price increases. 27 years ago tractor diesel was 11p a litre,fertiliser about £120 a ton. Consider that today diesel is 70p a litre and fertiliser is £340 a ton things are hardly looking bright on the grain growing front! I would also like some to consider that the price of wheat has nothing to do with the price of a loaf of bread as the price of malting barley has nothing to do with the price of a pint of beer. The actual value of the barley in a pint is less than 3 pence. Ofcourse when wheat does get a rise in price due to a poorer worldwide harvest the PR genuis of Mr Supermarket gets a story out that prices will have to rise due to grain increases but have you heard them shouting lately that bread will be coming down in price due to the 25% drop in wheat prices? I farm for the lifestyle I enjoy and yes I know there are a few agri business claiming vast subsidies but for Mr average farmer it keeps his head above water.A final thought that of the collasal CAP budget over 80% of it goes to bureucrats,civil service,department of Agriculture etc and less than 20% to the actual farmer but it wouldnt sound so good having a rant about feather bedded civil servants would it?
stichill99 said:
tale of woe
I did note that farmgate prices are st in my OP; it's long appeared to me that smaller farms exist for the aforementioned lifestyle, if you were in it for the money you'd be growing weed. Conventional farming is barely going to provide a living never mind pay for bling. DEFRA, or whatever they are called now, are presumably still fking up payments and still repaying the EU more in fines than they pay out to farmers. The Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Affairs was very well (re)named; how much have they pissed up the wall over the years dreaming up new names for what was MAFF or MinAg&Fish? They tend to get a new name after a big cull, so the foot&mouth outbreak will have given the stationers and signwriters plenty of work. To the OP,thank you for thinking about probably one of the most important issues that we will face over this century with ever increasing populations. If only politicians would take the issue seriously. When Margaret Beckett was head of Rural Affairs a journalist asked her about food security,she unbelievably replied that 'Tesco's will see to food security'. It used to make me cringe to see the heads of supermarkets donating large sums to the Government in the Labour years and getting their knighthoods. The Tories promised us when in opposition that they would introduce a supermarket ombudsman with real bite but alas they have seriously back tracked on that now.Same old ,same old!
Getragdogleg said:
I spoke to a farmer local to me who has not grown anything for years. He said it was not worth it to grow actual crops.
The flip side of all this is that the ground will have had lots of seasons to lie fallow as I am presuming he still ploughs it.
The guy must be a dThe flip side of all this is that the ground will have had lots of seasons to lie fallow as I am presuming he still ploughs it.
head. Growing crops still pays more than SFP. With diesel at 70p if he is ploughing bare land he is quite literally burning money. I dont think he will be ploughing the land every year to not grow a crop. It may just be fallow or would be better sown with a clover mixture to put fertility back in ground and let for grazing. Ofcourse if let for grazing there is then the issue of water supply,fencing etc. In some parts of the country you can get grazing for free if you keep the field tidy and fences repaired. Both parties then happy.
grumbledoak said:
Doesn't the CAP pay farmers to not produce? Surely we'd be better off binning it and letting the farmers produce more?
I thought it subsidises production in Europe so as to make our produce (read the French produce, English, Dutch and German farmers are perfectly competitive) competitive on the world market compared to developing countries produce.Willy Nilly said:
food is still quite cheap. What makes it look expensive now is that it was dirt cheap in 2007, then went up quite a lot in a very short space of time. Most of that is down to QE and investors piling into the commodities market to buy wheat futures and the like, just like the did with oil.
With the costs of inputs as high as they are efficiency is the name of the game. Large scale farming in the UK is nigh on impossible because people like the look of the countryside and its patchwork of small fields. These people are quite a powerful lobby group.
Yes, i think food prices will rise in the coming decades, and other living costs will fall. Yields, despite rising for decades, have stagnated over the past 10 yearsWith the costs of inputs as high as they are efficiency is the name of the game. Large scale farming in the UK is nigh on impossible because people like the look of the countryside and its patchwork of small fields. These people are quite a powerful lobby group.
100 years ago a house in todays money cost about £10,000 (£150 in 1910 money) but a loaf of bread cost half a days wages (whereas now you can buy 10 loaves for an hours minimum wage)
I suspect costs bid up by credit, like property, will fall (more to the point, they have to, to avoid starvation!) - not to £10k admittedly, but certainly to inflation adjusted pre 1980s on levels.
hidetheelephants said:
I didn't express myself very well; what I meant was ballooning food costs/shortages might mean a return to planned agriculture(or at least an emphasis on maximum production rather than maximum efficiency) rather than CAP per se. CAP was and is a bureaucratic monster that eats money and sts expensive french cheese.
No, you really didn't.ts expensive french cheese.If food gets more expensive, production will rise.
I can't quite work out where planned agriculture comes in to this.
hidetheelephants said:
Johnnytheboy said:
No, you really didn't.
If food gets more expensive, production will rise.
I can't quite work out where planned agriculture comes in to this.
Planned as opposed to merely letting the market deal with it.If food gets more expensive, production will rise.
I can't quite work out where planned agriculture comes in to this.
Johnnytheboy said:
No, you really didn't.
If food gets more expensive, production will rise.
I can't quite work out where planned agriculture comes in to this.
You need more capacity to increase production. If food gets more expensive, production will rise.
I can't quite work out where planned agriculture comes in to this.
Its not quite as easy as constructing a new factory where food is concerned, is it?
Sure there's land that can be converted to agricultural, probably not much in the UK though.
In the good old bad old days of the cold war one of the CAP's purposes was security and abundance of supply; surplus was simply bought and warehoused or dumped on unsuspecting African states.
If there is a global food shortage the more production capacity there is inside the EU the less food insecurity we will have. An easy way of maintaining capacity for which there is no commercial market is paying Giles to grow fresh air.
If there is a global food shortage the more production capacity there is inside the EU the less food insecurity we will have. An easy way of maintaining capacity for which there is no commercial market is paying Giles to grow fresh air.
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