Re: Quebec Protests

["schulte-baeuminghaus" <cresscourt@xxxxxxxxx>]

Barkley,

National protection within the EU for agricultural products, is not a
question of internal tariffs or quotas. It's a question of guaranteed
prices. Prices used to be guaranteed at a level, for example, that
would ensure that a part-time pig-farmer with a couple of pigs
in/outside, say, Dusseldorf, would make a nice living.
He didn't have to sell his pigs.
The CAP found some market for his pigs - or let them rot or gave them
away or whatever.
As to access for non-EU producers, what major product from, let's say,
Australia, in which EU farmers have an interest, can the Australian
farmers market on any scale in the EU? Such as wheat, other cereals,
dairy products, fresh fruit, beef, lamb and mutton, sugar, etc
etc.....
We still sell some wool, because the Europeans can't produce enough
especially of high quality - although most of the wool is now bought,
not by the EU but by China, Japan and other Asian producers of fine
woollen clothing and textiles.
Originally, in the 'fifties/'sixties, the journos liked to talk of
agriculture being the French payoff for German access for its industry
to France. But look how the German farmers have benefitted from the
CAP and how well French industry has done. Have you, in your visits to
France, noticed how many French cars are on the road compared with
German, Italian, Japanese or American? True, there are some, mostly
with foreign number plates, driven by Germans, Italians, and so on.
But it's not only the French who've enjoyed the CAP. The Danes regard
it as their postwar version of the prewar Commonwealth Preference
System. The Irish - God bless them - based their comeback from the
potato blight - a hundred and more years ago!! - on the CAP. They've
added industry on the back of that and it's good to see the Irish
doing so well.
You say that the CAP is "clearly one of the biggest single messes in
the EU".
But is it? And if so in what sense?
Of course, everyone says it's one of the craziest policies in a crazy
EU world.
But please take a closer look.
During several tough years, it was the CAP that held the EU together.
Everyone in the EU - then called the European Economic Community - got
something out of the CAP when they thought they were getting nothing
much out of anything else in the EEC/EU system.
But its value goes deeper than that.
Please take a look at the countryside in the member countries of the
EU and the way the little towns in the countryside have held together.
Don't forget that it's more than the farmers who benefit from the CAP.
The small-branch retail bankers, the road transporters, the railways,
the retailers in the country towns, the doctors and the lawyers in
farming areas, the buyers and sellers of farm produce, the insurers,
the storers, the exporters, the farm-machinery suppliers, the
suppliers of fertilisers and on and on and on.
The farming areas in the EU look - and they mostly are - green and
prosperous. Mostly they are, although they've got problems of which
we're all aware.
Have you looked at farming areas in countries which have "globalised"
their agriculture - cut out protection, subsidies, encouraged
cut-throat competition and the rest?
Have a look some time at, for example, Australia. One of the most
efficient farming countries in the world - once. Now too many farmers
are bankrupt. Country towns are disapperaing. The bankers have fled to
make money on mutual and pension funds, derivatives and foreign
enterprises, and, generally, to have a shot at making money in the
world casino economy. The doctors and lawyers have vanished to make
money in Sydney and Melbourne. Protection of the bush environment has
collapsed. Country roads have deteriorated. Railways have shut down
many country lines.
It's as though the gold mines have been worked out. The miners have
gone. Their settlements are quietly going back to the bush.
I used to think, like you, that the CAP was a mess. How I wish now
we'd somehow been able to formulate and implement something the same
kind of mess in Australia, even if it were to do no more than restore
the Australian countrside to what it once was - its condition, let's
say, some thirty years ago.
I know there's a lot more to be said than this but it all leads to the
conclusion that -
The Quebec protesters have something real to protest about and, as
soon as they get their thoughts and agenda togethers, we might begin
to see some gradual - or revolutionary? - improvement for millions of
people around the world, including those who abandoned so much to the
siren call of the "free market," "globalisation" and other devices
that appeal to a so-called élite but that are destroying many formerly
stable, valuable societies, as well as individuals within them,
whether in the cities or the countryside..


James Cumes
The Bookshelf of James Cumes
http://members.chello.at/schulte-baeuminghaus


----------
>From: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
>To: "schulte-baeuminghaus" <cresscourt@xxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: Quebec Protests
>Date: Wed, Apr 25, 2001, 7:48 pm
>

> James,
>       My use of "fussing" was sarcastic.  I am all
> too aware that the EU's CAP is this enormously
> expensive and bureaucratic scam, mostly set up
> to please the French, clearly one of the biggest
> single messes in the EU, although not fatally so.
>       However, you overstate things.  There is not
> total protectionism with regard to non-EU ag
> products, but certainly very vigorous protectionism.
> OTOH, there is very little within the EU, although
> it is not completely gone.  This is why agriculture
> is a major sore point with regard to the admission
> of new members and a major reason the French
> are regularly the naysayers in terms of letting new
> members in.  They were unhappy about the Spanish
> and Portuguese geting in because of the competition
> from their agricultural commodities, and it is because
> of agriculture above all that the French have been
> (trying to) block Poland and other East European
> countries from entering.
> Barkley Rosser
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "schulte-baeuminghaus" <cresscourt@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>; "Peter Dorman"
> <dormanp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "Post Keynesian Thought" <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 3:00 AM
> Subject: Re: Quebec Protests
>
>
>> Barkley,