4 ms·

It's a lot more complicated than that. There isn't one single 'farming lobby'. France, to take your example, has a highly inefficient agricultural system, heavi

by roel_v 10y ago

It's a lot more complicated than that. There isn't one single 'farming lobby'. France, to take your example, has a highly inefficient agricultural system, heavily dependent on CAP subsidies. There has been massive pressure the last two decades to reduce that, but it hasn't happened yet and probably won't for years to come. This is a form of 'lobbying' (those farmers get benefits from those subsidies), even if those farmers didn't have the clout to set higher milk price floors (a weird concept in the first place, since this is a very basic supply/demand thing - the reason they don't make enough is because their per-liter cost is too high compared to the competition; sure you can say that that's because extra-EU farmers don't have to internalize environmental costs to the same degree the EU ones have to, but then it's a matter of setting import restrictions, not having an artificial price floor enforced. But I digress.) Of course fertilizers and pesticide produces are an aspect of the abstract concept of 'the Ag lobby', but it's much more nuanced than that.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> a weird concept in the first place, since this is a very basic supply/demand thing (...) but then it's a matter of setting import restrictions, not having an artificial price floor enforced I sometimes wonder if such concepts aren't simply the limits of human mind in action - price floor is simple, farmers can do some basic calculations and figure out that "if only milk costed at least €this, we could finally make a profit on it" (this is obviously ignoring all the clever ways markets can work around such increases, but that's complexity again). It's also a single thing to ask for. On the other hand, changing import tariffs is complicated, affects many things, and its effect on milk prices is indirect and therefore hard to predict. It's like two different perspectives - from God's eye view on the country as a system, it's obvious you have to tweak some internals to get the desired effect. But from the perspective of people on the sides of the system asking someone to change something, those internals may be unavailable and instead of picking what's best, they have to pick what's available.
tomp 10y ago
> sure you can say that that's because extra-EU farmers don't have to internalize environmental costs to the same degree the EU ones have to, but then it's a matter of setting import restrictions A great argument against the current version of globalisation. Free trade is good, dumping isn't!

by roel_v 10y ago

TeMPOraL 10y ago

> a weird concept in the first place, since this is a very basic supply/demand thing (...) but then it's a matter of setting import restrictions, not having an artificial price floor enforced I sometimes wonder if such concepts aren't simply the limits of human mind in action - price floor is simple, farmers can do some basic calculations and figure out that "if only milk costed at least €this, we could finally make a profit on it" (this is obviously ignoring all the clever ways markets can work around such increases, but that's complexity again). It's also a single thing to ask for. On the other hand, changing import tariffs is complicated, affects many things, and its effect on milk prices is indirect and therefore hard to predict. It's like two different perspectives - from God's eye view on the country as a system, it's obvious you have to tweak some internals to get the desired effect. But from the perspective of people on the sides of the system asking someone to change something, those internals may be unavailable and instead of picking what's best, they have to pick what's available.

tomp 10y ago

> sure you can say that that's because extra-EU farmers don't have to internalize environmental costs to the same degree the EU ones have to, but then it's a matter of setting import restrictions A great argument against the current version of globalisation. Free trade is good, dumping isn't!