New threat to food security

EUROPE’S Common Agricultural Policy (the CAP) was forged in the 1950s, with memories of wartime starvation fresh in the minds of an underfed population.

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.