Thread by @AukeHoekstra

Is the deal with Australia a race to the bottom for UK farmers?

@herdyshepherd1 is right: it is now.

@MLiebreich is also right: it could become the opposite. IF we supplement farmers income with their ecosystem services.

Short thread because it's relevant for many countries.

https://twitter.com/MLiebreich/status/1405616776474513414

First off: there is no protection in place for farmers now and the UK should really avoid competing head to head with the atrocious way they treat cattle in Australia.

BUT this is better fixed by standards.

I'm not a lawyer but rules should follow logic and logically it's simple: if practices are illegal in the UK then meat produced using similar practices in Australia (irrespective of if it's legal THERE) should be illegal in the UK.

An even bigger problem is that Australia can produce cheaper because it has SO MUCH SPACE. So trying to compete under a simplistic market is doomed to fail in any case. Michael is right: you can't fix this market failure with higher prices. It's a cul-de-sac.

The solution?
We should be very clear that we expect farmers to provide not ONE but TWO services.

The first is the foodstuff we all know.

The second is ECOSYSTEM SERVICES.
And yes we should pay them for that.
Just like we pay for national parks and other commons.

Basically we want things like diverse plots that look nice and maximize biodiversity, combined with facilities that eases the suffering of animals. Things most farmers want too I bet. That we can't have that because of simplistically applied capitalism is madness.

As Michael points out it's more logical to fund such ecosystem services with taxpayer money (it's people in the UK that want a nice countryside) than through price hikes which leads to tariff wars.

Off course you can in parallel try to convince consumers they might want to pay a premium for meat without hormones, torture, killing of bees and other insects, etc.

Under this scheme farmers that go the extra mile could find customers willing to pay for this all over the world.

In the Netherlands this might be even more pressing. In terms of incentive structure farmers and people caring for nature and climate are almost completely at odds. We are one of the world leaders in terms of fattening+slaughtering and manure/nitrogen pollution.

So: making international food markets care about ecosystem services, happy animals, and a beautiful countryside is an uphill battle. Capitalism is flawed that way.

But we can ban certain practices and more importantly we can start paying DIRECTLY for better ecosystem services.