- Nov 11, 2009
- 12,278
So let's just agree that
1, Many famers, like your relatives, struggle on very low margins.
2. Thus the subsidy - whatever its size - is vital.
3. It is not as big as the subsidy given to, say, the French.
4. In 2021, that subsidy is likely to disappear. (Not for the French.)
5. Not only that but frictionless trade in agri exports is likely to go and there will be fewer migrant workers to pick the crops.
6. This was something that the victims voted for.
7. This was largely because the French get more.
8. Farmers don't moan.
9. Because they voted for this, they certainly won't moan in 2021.
Honestly, I can see why some folk voted for Brexit, and I sympathise with anyone struggling to make a living, but I can't for the life of me understand this.
It's a ridiculous fudge and gargantuan waste of taxpayers money. So mainly the French can protect their way of life.
We give handouts to African nations and yet lock them out of our protectionist block to trade themselves out of lower living standards.
Farmers may have got used to subsidies to survive, but the whole system needs changing.
Legislate if you must a minimum price supermarkets must pay, left to free market economics they make the profits, farmers get nothing and governments then bail out farmers. And close off competition from outside.
Total top to bottom restructure. Paying 38% of the budget to uncompetitive farmers for uncompetitive and sometimes unused produce is obscene. The EU is a cumbersome uncompetitive protectionist racket.