Dan Morgan of the Washington Post reports on the legislative passage of a 5-year US Farm Bill, with a sufficient majority in the House of Representatives (318:106) to override any Presidential veto. President Bush had previously threatened a veto unless the Farm Bill would set a new upper limit on the size of subsidy payments and avoid raising any new taxes. He looks to have been outmaneuvered. … Read the rest
US House of Representatives passes ‘veto-proof’ Farm Bill
Dan Morgan of the Washington Post reports on the legislative passage of a 5-year US Farm Bill, with a sufficient majority in the House of Representatives (318:106) to override any Presidential veto. President Bush had previously threatened a veto unless the Farm Bill would set a new upper limit on the size of subsidy payments and avoid raising any new taxes. He looks to have been outmaneuvered. … Read the rest
Commission proposal: more leaks
The Commission’s detailed proposals for legislation in the CAP health check have appeared on Wikileaks.org. … Read the rest
Darling's daring bid for reform
The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (aka Finance Minister) Alistair Darling wrote earlier this week to all his counterparts on the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) ahead of today’s meeting, setting out the case for a radical reform of the EU’s agriculture and trade policies. Specifically, he calls for the abolition of direct aids (some €34 billion a year) and the abolition of EU tariffs on agricultural imports. He also signals the growing concern in the UK about the EU’s headlong rush into food-for-fuel policies that are widely seen as contributing to the rapidly rising costs of food in Europe and elsewhere.… Read the rest
Darling’s daring bid for reform
The UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (aka Finance Minister) Alistair Darling wrote earlier this week to all his counterparts on the Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) ahead of today’s meeting, setting out the case for a radical reform of the EU’s agriculture and trade policies. Specifically, he calls for the abolition of direct aids (some €34 billion a year) and the abolition of EU tariffs on agricultural imports. He also signals the growing concern in the UK about the EU’s headlong rush into food-for-fuel policies that are widely seen as contributing to the rapidly rising costs of food in Europe and elsewhere.… Read the rest
Michael Pollan on the importance of culture in food
American journalist Michael Pollan has written some great books about food and farming, most notably the Omnivore’s Dilemma, which cast a critical eye at so-called Big Organic: the industrial mono-culture organic farmers and growers and big organic chain stores like Whole Foods Market. His new book In Defense of Food offers a manifesto for eating in America to break the vicious cycle of junk food, chronic diet-related diseases and food ignorance. Many of his ideas draw on the notion of ‘food culture’, something that he argues that Americans have lost, and we Europeans (well, maybe not us Brits), still have.… Read the rest
EU food safety rules: Do as I say, not as I do
The timing, if not the chicken, is delicious. On the same day (and in the same newspaper!) that German farms minister Horst Seehofer called for the EU to export its standards of environmental, animal welfare and food production regulations to China and India, it has been revealed that member state governments have been covering up the flouting of EU’s rules on cleaning chicken meat with chlorine solution. These rules have kept out all poultry imports from the US for the past eleven years. … Read the rest
Milk quota removal could cost EU farmers €4 billion
The elimination of milk quotas as currently foreseen in 2015 will result in a loss to producers of €4 billion, and a gain to consumers of €3.7 billion, according to research by economists at the Institut d’Economie Industrielle in Toulouse. The group were asked to evaluate the impacts of the expiry of the EU milk quota system, comparing particularly a ‘soft landing’ scenario in which milk quotas are gradually increased between now and 2015, and a ‘hard landing scenario’ in which quotas are maintained until 2015 and then eliminated in that year. The ‘hard landing’ scenario postpones the adverse effects for producers both in competitive milk-producing countries (where quota rents are currently high) as well as in countries which currently are not meeting their quota.… Read the rest
Farm subsidies to airlines and cruise ships?
Earlier in the year a collaboration between German TV station Bayerischer Rundfunk’s Report München, Greenpeace and farmsubsidy.org uncovered farm subsidies going to some unusual recipients: airlines and cruise ships. Recall that similar revelations about farm subsidies to golf courses, pony clubs and railway companies made headlines in the autumn of last year. Watch the report with English subtitles, after the jump.… Read the rest
Commission's health check proposals leak again
This is the latest in a series of leaks of the Commission’s proposals for the health check, due on 20 May. The explanatory memorandum outlines the latest thinking on the various elements of the package including the issue of progressive modulation: a gradually rising level of compulsory modulation, with higher rates for recipients getting more than €100k, €200k and €300k. You can download it here (http://tinyurl.com/4p5h4p) and read for yourself.… Read the rest