New threat to food security
Fifty years on, wartime memories are fading and the greatest threat to food security seems to be supermarkets, which charge consumers up to 14 times the farmer’s or fisherman’s cost of production.
That’s far from the ideal world of anti-CAP campaigners, in which farmers would rely on a fair price from the supermarkets rather than a subsidy from Brussels.
Presumably, anti-CAP campaigners would also depend on supermarkets to take a modest profit margin on their huge turnovers, and not overcharge consumers.
Why do calls for scrapping the CAP continue, when it is clear that international supermarket chains, among the most powerful organisations in modern economies, seem to have few scruples about enslaving farmers and overcharging consumers to swell their huge profits?
Without CAP subsidies to keep farmers’ heads above water, the biggest supermarket chains would effectively own the farms of Europe, and could charge consumers whatever they wanted, once they had gained control of the food chain.
This is already an established worldwide trend in the pig-meat industry, which, in Europe, operates largely outside the protection of the CAP.
The Smithfield company farms 12m pigs and processes 20m annually, controlling the industry in the US, with major subsidiaries in Canada, Europe, South America, and China.
Throwing farmers unprotected by the CAP into such a dog-eat-dog marketplace seems to pose little worry for people like Michael Wills, the UK Home Office minister who has resigned to concentrate on abolishing the CAP.
Mr Wills says that CAP abolition would convince the British people of the benefits of Europe, and help persuade them to accept the euro.
He complains about expensive food; but would he recommend a fair price commission to help keep farmers in business without subsidies? Farmers would not need subsidies if they were paid a fair price.
Right now, it’s only subsidies that keep most sheep farmers, for example, in business.
Supermarkets are charging 19.50 per kg for loin chops, and 11.20 per kg for leg of lamb. The farmer gets 3.64 per kg of carcass weight; hardly a fair share of the retail price, which explains why CAP subsidies make up such a large part of sheep-farm income.
The story is the same with fish; the Irish South and West Fisherman’s Organisation (ISWFO) says it gets one-fourteenth of the supermarket price for haddock.
Fishermen have no CAP support to fall back on, and ISWFO manager, Jason Whooley, says they may soon have no choice but to review the current marketing and distribution channels.
If the CAP were dismantled, farmers too would be forced into doing something about marketing and distribution.
Michael Wills would be wise to preserve the current CAP, which drip feeds farmers sufficiently for them to stay in business, rather than end the CAP and leave the consumer at the mercy of trade wars, multi-national supermarket and processor chains, and unionised farmers or worldwide ranching companies.
