Consumers and Third World pay for farm subsidies

THERE is a contradiction at the heart of the attempted rebuttal of my letter on EU subsidies and tax non-compliant farmers (May 15) by Liam Cashman and Munster’s IFA vice-president Sean O’Leary (Letters, May 19).

The EU remains deeply divided over CAP and its subsidies with a number of world organisations pointing to the detrimental side-effects of what they claim is massive over-subsidisation. Oxfam, for example, accuses the EU of dumping surplus subsidised products such as dairy and sugar on India, Jamaica and Mozambique, destroying the livelihoods of small farmers,.

In June 2003, CAP reform brought in a single payment to replace most — but not all — subsidies, with individual member states allowed dispensations on certain products if they chose to do so. In addition, single payment subsidies received by farmers are to run in parallel with the reference period 2000-to-2003, so nothing has really changed that much — if at all.