Policy jigsaw takes shape

TILLAGE farmers won’t have to set aside 10% of their acreage this autumn and next year.

As a result, the European Commission estimates farmers will produce 10 to 17 million tons more grain in 2008 — badly needed because global grain prices have reached very high levels, and the Commission expects these exceptionally high prices to persist, due to a combination of bad harvests in important cereal producing countries, and growing demand for cereals for production of bio-ethanol.

Very high grain prices are not good news for the EU, nor for anywhere else.