That’s an illusion. The French want it very badly and nobody but the British has the nerve to go up against that.

“There is no harmony in the interests of a land spanning so much area with differences in climate and history”

If Britain’s policy is truly based on such a premise, then its membership is a fraud perpetrated both on the other members when it joined, and on its own people, who were never informed of the explicit nature of the project. You surely cannot claim that Heath did not understand the European perspective, though his FO advisers may have misled him about the speed at which it would progress and its chances of success.

These are two entirely different things. There is no harmony in the interests of a land spanning so much area with differences in climate and history. Agriculture that is sensible in Spain is madness in Scotland.

The EU food supply is safe to a very high degree ? That is not the perception of French and German consumers, who for different reasons have almost religious views on food purity.

That is the point. If it is religious there will never be agreement and putting it on EU level is a recipe for eternal trouble.

not the idea of a living countryside

Why? Is the EU an institution that does social engineering in its members? Or put a different way, if the French want it, fine, but why have everybody pay?

But I?m not. The forest is in fact a rather sterile environment, most interesting only at it?s edges and along cuts such as woodland rides. Things like heaths, peat bogs, marshes, usually originating from human action like burning or grazing sheep, all need the kind of active conservation that promotes species diversity; the very species diversity that is threatened by monocultures.

I think Brits probably feel as strongly about this sort of thing than anybody in Europe. Look at the membership of the RSPB ? enormous. Yet charity organizations can only touch the surface. The key is farming practices, and the real special interest is agribiz. Dealing with this special interest is at least as much on the French agenda as on the British one.

I?m not sure how the number of livestock computes here, but let?s just say that Swiss farmers get even more subsidies than EU ones. Norway?s do too.

I?m not disagreeing with you about the volume of production. Luxemburg was precisely aimed at delinking production levels from subsidies. I?m saying that the countryside is a social issue ? and in many parts of the EU it?s where there is the greatest poverty and the greatest need for regional cohesion and other funds. The point is that Britain?s agricultural model is rather exceptional, and that to propose it as a model of rationality is special pleading.

What should the EU care ? Depends what it?s for, which I agree is a political issue. I want it to be for the harmonization and satisfaction of EU citizen?s economic and social interests. I don?t see it as primarily about securing the best return on capital, although that?s important. Sounds high-blown, OK, but ideologies do play a part in decision-making.

The EU food supply is safe to a very high degree ? That is not the perception of French and German consumers, who for different reasons have almost religious views on food purity. People do care about food prices, of course, but the key to better nutrition is education about dietary choice. The supermarkets have been getting away with appalling pressure on farmers. If people only saw how most of what they consume is produced ? Even the wealthy are offered little real choice. The way the CAP favours big producers and a whole shtick of minor EU regulations ? what tomatoes you?re allowed to grow ? are absurd, but it is precisely those aspects of the CAP that must be reformed, not the idea of a living countryside.

The land would change drastically. If you are content to let the forests grow, all you need to do is to keep your hands off.

BTW, my personal impression is that the non-EU Swiss are the greatest pigshit-spreaders in Europe, today as much as in my distant childhood, and I agree it’s unattractive.

It is not a question of attraction. People are paying a lot more for sewage treatment in water fees to connect the last houses to the processing plants at a vanishingly small benefit while the sanest thing would be to have less livestock.

I agree that there would be no need to get the EU involved if the countryside were not a social environment, with voters and relatives of voters in it, as in France, Italy, etc, rather than agribiz country estates and holiday homes, as in much of England.

You may be making a case for national subsidies. If the French want to be foolish, fine by me. But what should the EU care?

I don’t see what is morally wrong with treating this concern as something democratic governments should respond to, just as they respond to urban unemployment through EU regional cohesion funding.

Because they are not told what these subsidies mean to their food bill.

But we need better food more than we need cheap food

I disagree. The EU food supply is safe to a very high degree. Quality is ensured in as far as high standards of health are met. If anybody wants super high quality food, fine, it’s a free union, let him pay for it. And the days of a people caring about food prices are not past.

The countryside does bring ‘externalities’ that town and city dwellers benefit from

Then they shall pay. Should they want the olde country from days of long begone level a surcharge on visitors.
There is an externality to preserving biodiversity and clean water and air. Agriculture is a detriment to that.
Furthermore, this kind of hyperregulation is killing us by the death of a thousand cuts. This is a fine example of a body of regulations each single of which can be made a case for in its entirety is detrimental to the common good.

“Brits (under Thatcher anyway) used to go on about inefficient (read small) European farms, and that?s Blair?s point too, in less abrasive language”.

I think the issue isn’t so much whether some of them are efficient or not, but that we need to move away from simply retaining what is. The CAP made a lot of sense as a transitional measure, but has become the norm. In Spain hundreds of thousands of ‘indocumented’ immigrants have been sucked in to work land that was being returned to nature, simply because with a combination of subsidies and bra?eros wages, it becomes profitable so to do.

We need a ‘territorial’ policy, just as they do in the US. The countryside does bring ‘externalities’ that town and city dwellers benefit from. But the money needs to be put into preserving and maintaining the countryside, sprucing up the villages, providing rural tourism outlets in keeping with the environment, and not on generating a bigger market for the petro-chemical industry.

(BTW, my personal impression is that the non-EU Swiss are the greatest pigshit-spreaders in Europe, today as much as in my distant childhood, and I agree it?s unattractive.)

I agree that there would be no need to get the EU involved if the countryside were not a social environment, with voters and relatives of voters in it, as in France, Italy, etc, rather than agribiz country estates and holiday homes, as in much of England. The Luxemburg-agreed reforms of the CAP (very slowly being applied) steer a path between the creation of larger surpluses, to be dumped on easily destabilsed countries like Albania, and turning ?les pecnauds?into charity cases. That delicate navigation requires funding ? and possibly retraining for conservation objectives - as much as the redevelopment of cities like Liverpool.

Brits (under Thatcher anyway) used to go on about inefficient (read small) European farms, and that?s Blair?s point too, in less abrasive language. This ?special interest? as you call it, is not seen as such in parts of the continent where the industrial and agricultural revolutions were not so sudden and drastic as in pioneering Britain. People in towns have rural family there, quite often in some ancestral village. The problems of French wine growers in the Rousillion are identified with far more than the average Londoner identified with, say, Hull fishermen. I don?t see what is morally wrong with treating this concern as something democratic governments should respond to, just as they respond to urban unemployment through EU regional cohesion funding.

I agree the proportion of EU funds that goes to agriculture is too high given the percentage of the population involved. But we need better food more than we need cheap food, and we?re more likely to get that through EU policies ( especially if they became parliamentary matters and much more imaginative about directing farming practices towards that end) than through the sort of food production we have in Britain, which is about supermarket profit, not sustenance and taste.

http://www.oxfaminternational.org/eng/story_Albania_dumping.htm

Well I live in Spain, and spend a lot of time in the country, and I can tell you the only thing that ’stinks’ around here isn’t the political corruption.

“We pass always stricter limits on sewage and care about nitrogen getting into lakes and rivers through nitric oxides while you may dump pig shit on fields.”

Oh how I agree with you. There is also the question of water use, and its relative scarcity. We’re back to the days of turning off the tap while you brush your teeth here in Spain, as this year’s drought is very important, meantime the agricultural consumption is enormous.

If this is about landscaping, instead of securing a food supply, there is really no need to get the EU involved. A decision on landscaping is much better made on a local level.
Furthermore, food prices are important. There is widespread agreement that Europe needs to adopt free market policies which will cut benefits and increase income inequalities. Now these are necessary. But there’s something morally wrong in maintaining high food prices for a special interest’s sake while cutting unemployment benefits even for families with children.

perhaps we can afford measures that promote something other than a monoculture landscape.

Abolishing the CAP would allow a lot of land the fall into disuse and enormously benefit nature. Agriculture in much of Europe is the main negative impact on the enviroment. Policy on this is nonsensical. We pass always stricter limits on sewage and care about nitrogen getting into lakes and rivers through nitric oxides while you may dump pig shit on fields.