"Tim Lamb" wrote in message
...
In article , Torsten Brinch
writes
?! You were commenting (quote below) the perceived problem, that
farmers are falling behind in income, leading to the aim of the common
agriculture policy, CAP, to attempt to bring farmers up to some form
of income parity with the rest of society. You commented that this
problem cannot be resolved by CAP because -- because --- because
what??

****
The practical policy has been dominated by attempts to increase farmer
income, implicitly aiming at bringing it -- from a falling behind
position -- to parity with other income groups of society.

This is not resolvable. Farmers choose to farm and go to extreme
lengths
to stay in business. Most other professions are rewarded by the
supply/demand system.

I don't know what income a farmer should expect so I don't know with
which group parity is intended. However, as there surpluses of our
products and there is little likelihood of farmers leaving the industry
from choice, bulk commodity purchasers are under no pressure to raise
prices.

Production volume is not affected in a meaningful way by the number of
farmers. The labour (including management) required to produce a tonne of
any commodity is constantly falling. Farmers are forced to leave the
industry due to ever increasing production efficiency. To reduce the
volume of production you must take land out of use, either temporarily by
creating wildlife reserves or similar, or permanently by creating
woodlands, housing estates, airports, roads, etc.

I expect that if the figures for agricultural production are considered
over the last 200 years the quantity of food produced in the UK has risen
roughly with demand, i.e. in line with population increase. Now whether
farmers should be blamed for the ever increasing population, especially now
as the increase is largely through immigration, I've no idea, or perhaps
population increase creates a demand for more food. Either way, it's
probably about time we broke the cycle and the state, or others, purchased
a decent proportion of agricultural land and did something different with
it, golf courses, school playing fields, waste tips, airports, whatever.
The present unreasonable shortage of land for non agricultural uses is
quite likely going to cripple our economy.

As the alternative is further transfers from taxpayers via the
exchequer I see no prospect of the *parity* objective being achieved.

In countries where no subsidy is paid 10 times as much labour, or more, is
used to produce each tonne of food. The benefits to farmers of under
production should not be ignored. If land is removed from agricultural use
it should be possible to create a situation of permanent under supply. Not
good for inner city nutrition, but damned good for farm incomes.

Michael Saunby