Last night, BBC2 screened the first of six hour-long episodes in a new documentary series, The Future of Food.
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UK House of Lords reviews 2010 EU draft budget
In a recent report, the UK House of Lords European Committee criticised the European Commission’s proposals for the 2010 European Communities budget for maintaining a very high level of spending on agriculture, and failing to shift adequate resources to stimulus measures to aid economic recovery. It expressed frustration that, in the middle of an economic crisis, the proportion of the budget going to agriculture remained so large.
It identified a particular problem for the funding of the second tranche of the European Economic Recovery Programme. This was the stimulus package of €5 billion agreed in March 2009, of which €2.6 billion was to be funded from the 2009 budget and €2.4 billion from the 2010 budget. Because of the limited margin between the Financial Perspective ceiling and proposed appropriations for Heading 1 of the budget Sustainable Growth, last year it was agreed to fund the energy infrastructure projects by transferring some of the unused margin under Heading 2 (mainly agriculture) to Heading 1.… Read the rest
Addressing the dairy crisis – is US intervention buying a good thing for EU producers?
Today, the US raised its intervention support prices for some dairy products as a way of supporting the US farm price for milk. The support price for skimmed milk powder was increased by 15 percent and for cheddar cheese by 16 per cent for a limited 3-month period. Immediately milk prices on the Chicago Mercentile Exchange increased by 5 per cent, and it is estimated that the measure will add $243 million to US dairy farm incomes in the current year.
From a European perspective, this measure has ambiguous effects and may even be welcomed for its short-run effects. In the short run, the Commodity Credit Corporation will enter the market as an additional buyer, raising the floor price of milk. While only US milk products are eligible for support, as a major dairy exporter this action is going to help to strengthen world market prices, to the benefit also of EU producers.… Read the rest
Where to find data on EU export refunds?
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. Another excellent site is Datum, hosted by the UK Dairyco. Here the information on export refunds for dairy products is updated weekly, and it is also possible to download an Excel file with historical data, but of course the data only covers dairy. The Commission’s CIRCA network also seems to have pdf versions of export refunds – you can view the sugar data here – but access to CIRCA more generally and to its interest groups requires one to register so I don’t know if similar information for other CAP commodities is also available here.… 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. My interest is in the evidence for the thesis itself. Is it the case that small farms are better for the environment?… 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. Another fear was that the LDCs might import raw rice, process it and then export it back to the EU, adding sufficient value so as to meet the rules of origin requirements.… 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