Recently, I was looking for an internet source for EU export refunds – not overall expenditure, but the refund rates for individual commodities by month. What I was hoping to find was an Excel worksheet which set out this information, but it seems extraordinarily hard to come by. The nearest I could get was the excellent webpage on export refunds for milk and meat products maintained by OFIVAL, the French marketing agency. However, the data here take the form of pdf files containing the information every time the refund levels are changed, and it would be extremely tedious to transfer this into an Excel file.… Read the rest
Does farm size influence environmental outcomes?
A widely-accepted justification for subsidising agriculture is that we need to prevent the emergence of the industrialised, mono-cultural agriculture which is the inevitable result of an efficiency-based, cost-oriented farming model by protecting the diversified, environmentally-friendly small farmer in order to maintain the positive environmental benefits of European agriculture. This is part of the philosophy of agrarianism which underpins much discussion of agricultural policy.
Let us leave aside for the moment the fact that the bulk of existing farm subsidies go to larger farmers rather than smaller ones, so that even if the thesis above is valid, current agricultural policy does not support it.… Read the rest
The Commission milk market report
The Commission today produced its report on the dairy market requested by the European Council in June, and Commissioner Fisher Boel has underlined its main findings in her blog. The background to the current market crisis is shown clearly in the graph reproduced from the Commission report.
… Trends on the EU rice market
There was a fundamental reform of the EU rice market in 2003. The intervention price was cut in half to bring it down to the (then) level of the world prices, and producers were compensated by an increase in direct payments. An important impetus for this reform lay in the market opening offer by the EU to least developed countries (LDCs) under the Everything But Arms agreement which promised duty-free and quota-free access for rice imports from LDCs from September 2009.
Few LDCs are net exporters of rice. However, it was feared that LDCs might export, in line with the rules of origin, the totality of their domestic rice production to the EU, while importing their domestic consumption requirements from the world market.… Read the rest
Podcast: Roger Waite’s Brussels update
Roger Waite, editor of Agra Facts and journalism fellow of the German Marshall Fund (GMF) joins Jack Thurston (GMF Transatlatic Fellow) for a discussion of the current top issues in agriculture policy in Brussels: protests by European dairy farmers, the future of direct payments, what’s in store in the EU budget review and will Mariann Fischer Boel serve a second term as EU Agriculture Commissioner.
Podcast: Roger Waite's Brussels update
Roger Waite, editor of Agra Facts and journalism fellow of the German Marshall Fund (GMF) joins Jack Thurston (GMF Transatlatic Fellow) for a discussion of the current top issues in agriculture policy in Brussels: protests by European dairy farmers, the future of direct payments, what’s in store in the EU budget review and will Mariann Fischer Boel serve a second term as EU Agriculture Commissioner.
Roger Waite’s Brussels update… Read the rest
UK wheat can compete – so does it need subsidies?
Russia and Romania may be two of the cheapest places in the world to produce wheat, but the UK is only a little way behind. Releasing the result of its Global Cost of Production Challenge, Bidwells Agriculture head of research Carl Atkin, said that despite the higher unit price of inputs in the UK, cost of production per tonne is only marginally higher than in eastern Europe. ‘This is because of the considerable yield advantage the UK has, based on first-class soils and a maritime climate.’… Read the rest
UK wheat can compete – so does it need subsidies?
Russia and Romania may be two of the cheapest places in the world to produce wheat, but the UK is only a little way behind. Releasing the result of its Global Cost of Production Challenge, Bidwells Agriculture head of research Carl Atkin, said that despite the higher unit price of inputs in the UK, cost of production per tonne is only marginally higher than in eastern Europe. ‘This is because of the considerable yield advantage the UK has, based on first-class soils and a maritime climate.’… Read the rest
The debate on the post-2013 CAP
The debate on the future of the CAP after 2013 has now started following the informal Farm Council in the Czech Republic earlier this month. Those who want to influence the debate have about twelve months before the Commission publishes a Communication (effectively a White Paper) on future policy in the summer/early autumn of next year. Formal legislative proposals will then be published in the middle of 2011 together with the proposals for the financial perspectives from 2014 to 2019 or 2020.… Read the rest
The 2006 EU sugar reform in review
Two interesting papers on EU sugar policy recently crossed my desk. One is an account of the ‘new’ sugar regime after the 2006 reform by three legal academics from the University of Barcelona, in which they also examine whether the reformed regime is likely to be compatible with any agreement from the Doha Round negotiations. The other is the one of the series of regular reports by the US Foreign Agricultural Service on EU agricultural markets, this time on the likely impact of the EU sugar reform on ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) and LDC (least developed country) sugar exporters.… Read the rest