Since John wants to go down memory lane, let’s talk about the UK agricultural policy “as we enjoyed before joining the CAP” at the end of the 1950s.
The Farming Union and the Ministry for Agriculture used to get together and agree a guaranteed price for their products.
Despite paying the balance between the price a farmer got for their product and the guaranteed price, it also paid direct grants to farmers for things like ploughing, draining and the application of fertilizer.
People talk about the wine lakes of the EEC, but that was down to a policies that encouraged over production for export. Wine exports well.
Milk?
Not so much.
Milk?
Not so much.
All mile passed through the Milk marketing board which fixed retail prices, and all farmers received a guaranteed price for their product. Which led to milk over production.
That milk was then sold at less than the cost of production into dried milk and butter manufacturing.
The milk board also sold milk at a loss to schools, and the government (on top of the milk subsidy) would make up the difference.
Hop and potato growing was restricted by the government.
Just 1,100 farms were allowed to grow hops to a quota which kept prices up and prevented new farmers from entering the market.
In contrast, the Potato board set the price for potatoes and controlled the quota size.
Farmers could sell eggs at the farm gate, or to retailers with a special license, but the eggs were only subsidised if the farmers went through a packing station.
These subsidies led to an egg mountain, which unlike milk, travel well and the UK subsequently began dumping these eggs in Denmark, Italy and Germany.
Denmark complaining that it was destroying their egg industry until the British electorate discovered the subsidised eggs were ending up on German tables, and then the egg dumping was banned.
It also didn’t do any good for our import of eggs from Australia. (It’s a good job apples travel well).
In short, this nostalgia for pre-CAP agriculture is nonsense. We had milk lakes, we had egg mountains, we dumped, we over subsidised.
This isn’t an attack on British policy, because this stuff is actually hard. It’s about balancing consumer prices with production, imports, and exports.
Food security was given greater importance (in opposed to today where IMHO it isn’t given enough importance.)
But when people say “as we enjoyed before joining the CAP” they really should have a look at some of the UK’s historical agricultural policies.
Some were SHOCKING by modern standards.
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Some were SHOCKING by modern standards.
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