‘Farmland birds in Europe fall to lowest levels‘ is a terribly sad headline. And we should be raging that things have got so bad. The grey (or ‘English’) partridge is in free-fall right across Europe with a decline of two thirds in numbers since 1990, and of 82% since 1980 according to the European Bird…
Tag: CAP
Bitter harvest?
Around where I live the combines are out in the fields working by day and into the night. It’s a bit unusual that some farmers are getting in their wheat before the end of the barley or rape harvests. The high prices of wheat mean that everything depends on a good wheat harvest and yields…
Thunder
I woke this morning to the sound of thunder. Whereas Aristotle may have thought that this was the sound of clouds colliding I wonder whether it is the sound of disagreements in the EU over the future funding of CAP. Or maybe Peter Kendall is still trying to tell Charles Clover how much he enjoyed…
Your taxation – who is representing your interests?
The NFU is indeed a union working for the interests of its members and we should always remember that. And we should always remember that the money for which they are negotiating is our money, but that they do not negotiate directly with us. Unlike most unions who negotiate directly with an employer, whether public…
Income support for farmers
The argument that Pillar 1 income support for farmers keeps food prices low for all of us is pretty far-fetched. In the bad old days, subsidies were tied to production – you got paid by the taxpayer for every tonne of wheat you produced whether the market wanted it or not and that led to…