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Food Prices Still Rising...
Jul. 18th, 2008 09:51 amSo here's an interesting conundrum.
The EU apparently, due to rising prices in food, has some money to spare in its agricultural subsidy budget. About a billion euros out of the budget. Which will be donated, out of the goodness of their hearts, to aid farmers in Africa, because import food prices have become too high for most countries to import what they need. That seems a worthy endeavor.
The remaining 119 billion euros in the agriculture budget will go into subsidizing European farmers in order to prevent food prices from dropping.
Of course, as far as starving people in Africa are concerned, they might be able to get the same effect out of, say, dropping about a billion euros out of the subsidy budget, and devoting it to something worthwhile, like writing a constitution that can be read by someone without an advanced degree in European Union legalese. Or maybe, if they're on a free trade kick, they could even axe the entire 120 billion, and allow third world farmers to compete in the market.
But subsidizing the crops of your farmers, because they need to be able to afford to grow food, and the crops of your customers, because they can't afford to buy your food, at the same time, does not seem a reasonable long-term solution.
The EU apparently, due to rising prices in food, has some money to spare in its agricultural subsidy budget. About a billion euros out of the budget. Which will be donated, out of the goodness of their hearts, to aid farmers in Africa, because import food prices have become too high for most countries to import what they need. That seems a worthy endeavor.
The remaining 119 billion euros in the agriculture budget will go into subsidizing European farmers in order to prevent food prices from dropping.
Of course, as far as starving people in Africa are concerned, they might be able to get the same effect out of, say, dropping about a billion euros out of the subsidy budget, and devoting it to something worthwhile, like writing a constitution that can be read by someone without an advanced degree in European Union legalese. Or maybe, if they're on a free trade kick, they could even axe the entire 120 billion, and allow third world farmers to compete in the market.
But subsidizing the crops of your farmers, because they need to be able to afford to grow food, and the crops of your customers, because they can't afford to buy your food, at the same time, does not seem a reasonable long-term solution.