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You're mischaracterising the issue. Cheese isn't the issue at hand. Caloric efficiencies are a valid point, but here the greater harm is done by the huge thirst

by zdkl 9y ago

You're mischaracterising the issue. Cheese isn't the issue at hand. Caloric efficiencies are a valid point, but here the greater harm is done by the huge thirsty corn fields that encompass the horizon. The question as I understand it is whether the surplus production/exports are worth not scaling slightly back on the extensive farming. Either diversifying production, letting a part of the area to fallow or splitting large "strictly for profit" farms into distinct units would have many benefits ecologically and possibly even help revitalise the rural towns.

avar 9y ago
Cheese specifically isn't the issue at hand, but French cheese producers are one of many beneficiaries of French agricultural subsidies, but I don't see how anyone could argue that the relatively inefficient production of cheese has strategic value in the sense that you'd need to feed an otherwise starving population cheese. You'd instead at the very least just have them drink the milk directly, but more efficiently either consume the corn the cows are eating, or grow something in the grass fields the cows are using that people could eat directly. Then there's the unrelated question of whether these subsidies aren't causing a net harm on the environment in France. I don't know about that, I'm just pointing out that the argument for agricultural subsidies due to national security concerns doesn't hold up if it's being used to defend anything resembling current subsidies. That's before we even get to discussing how implausible that argument is to begin with. OK, maybe France and other EU countries would need to strategically make sure they don't become reliant on the likes of China, Russia etc. for food imports. But it makes no sense these days that France would need to be concerned that they couldn't just largely import food from Spain and Italy, who have onerous EU-imposed production quotas due to French agricultural lobbying, even though it's more efficient to produce the food there in many cases.

by zdkl 9y ago

avar 9y ago

Cheese specifically isn't the issue at hand, but French cheese producers are one of many beneficiaries of French agricultural subsidies, but I don't see how anyone could argue that the relatively inefficient production of cheese has strategic value in the sense that you'd need to feed an otherwise starving population cheese. You'd instead at the very least just have them drink the milk directly, but more efficiently either consume the corn the cows are eating, or grow something in the grass fields the cows are using that people could eat directly. Then there's the unrelated question of whether these subsidies aren't causing a net harm on the environment in France. I don't know about that, I'm just pointing out that the argument for agricultural subsidies due to national security concerns doesn't hold up if it's being used to defend anything resembling current subsidies. That's before we even get to discussing how implausible that argument is to begin with. OK, maybe France and other EU countries would need to strategically make sure they don't become reliant on the likes of China, Russia etc. for food imports. But it makes no sense these days that France would need to be concerned that they couldn't just largely import food from Spain and Italy, who have onerous EU-imposed production quotas due to French agricultural lobbying, even though it's more efficient to produce the food there in many cases.