IRISH FARMERS AND THE CAP REFORM

Madam, - Ruaidhrí Deasy, deputy president of the Irish Farmers' Association, treats us to some Cap facts (Letters, June 22nd), intended to defend the Cap.

For example, "only 38 per cent of the EU budget of €114.7 billion is spent on agriculture".

How did the word "only" get there? Here are few other "onlys" in the public domain: A. The Cap adds only €700 to each EU family's annual food bill[*]; B. Agriculture accounts for only 5 per cent of the EU's workforce[**]; C. On RTÉ's Questions and Answers on June 20th (where you served admirably on the panel), a farmer openly admits that EU subsidies account for 60-80 per cent of Irish family farm income[***]; in other words their actual work is worth only 20-40 per cent to their customers.

So with agriculture, we have an industry so woefully valueless that (most of) it should be abandoned, yet 95 per cent of successful taxpaying individuals and enterprises are forced to reward this failed industry with an enormous subsidy.

The EU no longer needs to grow its own food.

The world has no shortage for anyone anywhere with the money to pay for it, and that includes all of the EU, the more so after the price drops that would follow termination of the Cap.

Of course Ireland is happy to accept any EU gifts it can lay its hands on - who wouldn't be? But EU-wide, nothing comes close to the Cap in terms of confiscating its citizens' wealth.

And that is not to talk of the Third World livelihoods that the Cap destroys due to the subsidised dumping of surplus EU (and also US) agricultural products.

By all means let Ireland fight its corner to keep it hands on the EU money. But let's not pretend there is any logical, economic or moral merit behind it.

The money, or a fraction of it, would be far better spent on retraining the EU's farmers and farm workers to learn new, marketable skills that customers actually value. - Yours, etc,

TONY ALLWRIGHT, Killiney, Co Dublin

References

* http://assembly.coe.int/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc03/EDOC9853.htm
EU Parliamentary Assembly, "The costs of the Common Agricultural Policy", July 2003

** http://www.ips-dc.org/EUlessons/EUlessons.pdf
Institute for Policy Studies, "Lessons of European Integration for the Americas", Feb 2004, p24

*** http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/2053415.smil
Minute 7:46 - 8:30, in answer to the question "Is demise inevitable for the European Union?"
Questions & Answers, RTE, June 20th 2005 (with the Irish Times Editor Ms Geraldine Kennedy on the panel)

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What I've recently
been reading

“The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy Tol (2006),
is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a household lemon tree as their unifying theme.

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