Terminem com a PAC

A former leading adviser on UK government rural policy said yesterday that European farm subsidies should be scrapped.

Lord Haskins also told a conference in Glasgow that, after the purely farming parts had been scrapped, what was left of the common agricultural policy (CAP) should be re-nationalised. Abolishing the CAP would be painful short-term, he admitted. But long-term it would produce huge benefits for British farmers.

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He told a slightly stunned audience at the Semex cattle breeding company conference: "I believe that phasing out subsidies will make farming more efficient and more profitable. On my arable farm this year we will lose money on the three subsidised crops - wheat, barley and oilseed rape

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"Subsidies sustain inefficiencies and encourage farmers to grow crops on unsuitable land. Without subsidies, the inefficient will have to pull up their socks or pass production to another grower, almost certainly larger scale.

"Without subsidies, unsuitable land will go out of arable cropping. Either way, with less supply reaching the market, prices should rise."

Haskins supports the World Trade Organisation contention that all export subsidies and import tariffs should be wound down, and quickly. That will lead to a new, much more competitive, era.

[fonte: Scotsman via The Road to Euro Serfsom]