Corrupt Agricultural Policy

What is missing in NAFTA is precisely the element that makes the EU work as a free-trade bloc. The EU's regional policy pays money directly from wealthy industrialized nations such as Germany to less wealthy agricultural nations such as Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain. The result is that EU farmers stay on their farms. Like the US Farm Bill, EU subsidies violate the principles of free trade and comparative advantage, but do so for a higher cause: social stability. Militarism and the war on drugs, Asia Times, 18 March 2005

There are several things wrong with this. First, is that EU farmers don't stay on their farms. They have been leaving in droves, and for decades. Second is that most of the subsidies don't go to farmers: they are capitalised into land values or go to food processors or input suppliers. Of those subsidies that do find their way to farmers, most go to the very largest, who can then snap up any land parcels that become available. Subsidies have fuelled the replacement of farm labour by expensive machinery. Nevertheless, if we accept that subsidies have caused at least some farm labour to stay on the land, how would that be a force for social stability? The jobs that ex-farmers would have done are being undertaken by unwilling migrants. Unwilling, because any chance they had of becoming prosperous in their home countries has been crippled by the EU's protectionist barriers against imports of, amongst other things, farm products. The EU's Common Agricultural Policy has undermined social stability in Europe and in would-be exporting countries. It is a corrupt, deceitful policy that wastes billions of dollars, denudes the environment and subsidises the rich at the expense of poorer consumers and taxpayers.