The CAP saved a continent from starvation once and may do so again

YOUR columnist Steven King (April 30) repeats the error that 40% of the total EU spend is taken up by the CAP. This has gone uncontested for so long that correction is now essential.

And that is ignoring the fact that seldom, if ever, has a tax paid given such good value to those who paid it.

During the half-century of the CAP’s existence average industrial earnings have multiplied by 50; the retail cost of food by 16; the price paid to farmer by 8 and processing/retailing margins by 27. The farmer’s share of the retail price has dropped from 60% to 40%. An impressive performance from agriculture by any standard.

And yet there is some resentment of recent food price increases after about 10 years stagnation. Farm incomes lagged behind contemporaries without prospect of change. The next generation could see no prospect of a decent future and many left farming.

The origin of the price increases had nothing to do with farmer lobbying or farmer distress, but all to do with adventurous entrepreneurship in the echelons of international corporate finance.

Possibly encouraged by global unrest and continuing wars, oil producers now charge approximately $120 a barrel — up from $30. (How come sacred theories that ‘competition’ regulates the market do not seem to work?).

Viable substitutes for oil may be found in crops heretofore used as livestock feed, ie, a part of the human food chain. The scale of this new activity resulted in knock-on increases in most food prices and, given the lessons of recent history, farmers will gladly accept them.

CAP is a combination of taxes and production regulation, including price support, so that confidence in the market encourages continuing production under all conditions — even the least productive — year after year.

It has been spectacularly successful in obtaining the optimum production of food under all conditions throughout Europe over 50 years.

Assuming the search for renewable energy continues, a serious reduction of available food supplies must follow — not good as world population expands. Choices will be made between the interests of corporate finance/global trading and the spectre of global hunger, and it is difficult to be confident that big business will, for once, defer to the needy.

Therefore, it would be unwise to discard the contribution of marginal land to total global supply — possible only because the input of CAP enables its potential to be harnessed. Its contribution should be protected, not discarded on the altar of efficiency/competition. The CAP rescued Europe from starvation 50 years ago and it is likely to be needed on a larger scale in future.

What is regarded as the ‘EU budget’ is only a small part of tax revenue collected for various purposes such as tax breaks and other incentives to entice inward investment ... cost of the IDA and its services ... feasibility studies ... various supports for, say, financial services, etc. In other areas, taxes supply much, and sometimes all, of the funding for services including public transport, electricity, education, law administration, including the legal profession, gardaí, prison services, public health (currently of much concern), and many more.

Comparisons between the respective spends on CAP and the others, and the value for money delivered by CAP, as described, with that delivered by the other institutions listed, would be very interesting. Perhaps Mr King would care to justify his criticism of CAP by attempting them?

The real gem in Mr King’s column came when he wondered if the real dynamos of the economy would be mollycoddled in the same way as Mary Coughlan has been directed to massage farmers’ egos night and day up to the referendum”. Aimed at the wrong target? What about the classic advice to inhabitants of glasshouses?

Liam Cashman

‘Woodview’

Glanmire

Co Cork