It's not all Balls

The ploy by Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander to call for Dave Cameron to secure real cuts in the EU budget is a way of setting an elephant trap for the prime minister. They know if they were in office they would have great difficulty in securing such cuts given the stance of other member states. But it will give them another chance to score a few political points by portraying the Government as weak and incompetent, as well as increasing disarray on the Conservative benches.

So it's a smart tactical move. But once we get away from the partisan point scoring, they do have something interesting and important to say in their Times article. They point out that for all the fuss about Brussels bureaucrats, administration only takes up 6 per cent of the EU budget. £45 billion is sucked up by the CAP at a net cost to the UK of £1 billion a year (although we do get a budget rebate).

They argue, 'Although the butter mountains of the past are long gone, the need for reform is no less urgent. The CAP is an obstacle to international trade liberalisation, creates too few jobs and introduces distortions so that there is not a level playing field. The EU cannot afford this waste.'

They maintain. 'further reform of the CAP must not just be discussed but implemented.' If only. I think there will be some real cuts, but they will be mainly at expense of Pillar 2 expenditure which helps the environment and the rural economy. The blanket subsidies of Pillar 1 (the Single Farm Payment) will remain largely untouched.

There are a number of net beneficiaries of the CAP who will defend it to the last hedge row. But there is more to it than that. France gets less than it used to from the CAP, but for the French it is more than a question of the financial benefits, important though those are. It is also about a vision of Europe in which agriculture plays a central if often symbolic role. It is about a statist mode of government in which intervention in the market is seen as beneficial in the name of food security. Even though some are questioning whether France can continue to afford to allow 56 per cent of its GDP to be spent by the government, those attitudes are not going to change any time soon.

Interesting that Gisela Stuart, the Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, thinks that Britain should contemplate leaving the EU: Stuart . Admittedly, she has been moving in a Eurosceptic direction for eight years or so and is now something of a maverick on the Labour benches. But she was born in Germany and is a particularly thoughtful MP. What she says needs to be taken seriously.

Where her argument is perhaps weakest is in relation to the possibility of a two-tier EU, although I think she is correct in her judgment that a negotiation would not deliver that much in terms of a repatriation of powers (certainly not an exit from the CAP). This is not one of the usual supspects and it may be an early indication of a real shift in the political climate.

Oil seed rape loses its glow

Fewer oil seed rape fields may be seen in Britain following adjustments to EU policy. It's quite a complex story, but there are two big lessons to be learnt from it. First, individual planting decisions on farms are directly affected by the EU policy (although there are agronomic advantage to oil seed rape - known as canola in North America - as a break crop). Second, well-intended environmental interventions may have unforeseen consequences that cancel out the advantages it was hoped that would be gained (although we are in contested territory here).

Back in 2008 it was agreed by the EU that as part of the effort to combat global warming, each member state should derive at least 10 per cent of their transport fuels from renewable sources by 2020. However, since then there has been renewed concern about global food shortages. Biodiesels are only one and by no means the most important factor in such shortages: but their use can be influenced by policy decisions. Environmental groups have also argued that the EU policy encourages farmers in countries such as Indonesia to cut down forests that act as carbon sinks to grow crops for use as fuel in Europe, thus making global warming worse.

The canary yellow fields are a major feature of the summer landscape in Britain and have even become a niche attraction for Japanese tourists. They also contribute to biodiversity as the flowers are favoured by pollinating bees and birds nest in the stems.

UK rapeseed production rose 70 per cent in the decade to 2011, amounting to roughly 40 per cent of the land planted with wheat. Roughly one-fifth of British rapeseed oil production goes into biodiesel. Farmers are now likely to switch into wheat which, of course, is in a sense the intention of the policy modification.

There is, however, fierce resistance from the biodiesel industry to the draft proposals who are crying foul. They invested heavily in refining capacity based on the 2008 rule change.

The Commission has, in fact, watered down its original proposals, but has only succeeded in upsetting both camps. Environmentalists claim that the proposals do not go far enough, the industry that they go too far.

Some of this is very technical, but food crop-based biofuels are still to be banned from contributing more than 5 per cent of transport fuel consumed in the EU. 'We are sending a clear signal that future increases in biofuels must come from advanced biofuels. Everything else will be unsustainable,' said EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard when unveiling the proposal in Brussels.'

Rob Vierhout, secretary general of advanced biofuel producers ePure went as far as to claim the Commission is 'NGO-driven' but there was little evidence that there was a great deal of satisfaction from that side either. 'If this proposal becomes law, biofuels more damaging to the climate than crude oil will still be used to meet green transport targets,' Greenpeace’s EU transport policy director Franziska Achterberg claimed.

Anti-poverty charity ActionAid called the proposed 5 per cent biofuels limit on food-based biofuels an 'important symbolic first step,' but called for a total ban on food and land-based fuels and fired back at the biofuels sector by accusing the Commission of buckling to industry pressure by taking the 'heart out of the proposal'. The Institute for European Environmental Policy was similarly scathing about what it saw as a Commission climbdown on in the face of industry pressure while welcoming the biofuel cap

Perhaps what one can say is that government interventions of this kind, however well intentioned, are always fraught with the risk of going wrong and end up displeasing everyone. One of the commentators on the industry side said that if the Commission pursued their line they might as well scrap the CAP. Be careful what you wish for.

Are UKIP wrong about the CAP?

Stuart Agnew MEP, the UKIP agricultural spokesman, has said the EU 'has become far too big to have a CAP.' There are certainly those who think that the EU is too geographically diverse to have a 'one size fits all' policy, although in practice it is not really like that. He also criticised farmers who receive subsidies for wind turbines and solar panels on their land as 'robbing the poor to pay the rich.'

European Commission official and agricultural economist John McClintock was trotted out to defend the CAP and said that scrapping the CAP 'could lead to food riots like we have seen in other parts of the world like Haiti.' This is scaremongering of the worst kind, but defenders of the CAP have seized on the food security card.

Mr McClintock is described as an agricultural economist, but he doesn't seem to have much love for the market mechanism. He said, 'There are still people who dream about the free market in agriculture, but the reality is that it could be socially disastrous.' Socially disastrous for whom, one has to ask?

Mr McClintock said that scrapping the CAP would mean that many farmers would not be able to survive. But is getting rid of marginal and inefficient producers necessarily a bad thing? He also argued that food prices would go up, but this could be offset if the EU lowered the high tariff walls it erects against much of the rest of the world. Defenders of the CAP argue that this helps the EU to be self-sufficient, but is it such a bad thing to import from countries well suited for agricultural production? Anyway, if one is concerned about self-sufficiency, perhaps there ought to be renewed attention to the quality of agricultural land when development takes place?

He also said that one of the main objectives of the CAP was to ensure that farmers had a comparable income to those in cities. Fair enough, but there are many people in rural areas who are not farmers and suffer from relative poverty. Surely this is a case for income supplements rather than subsidies to agriculture?

Similarly he argued that the CAP kept the countryside alive. But that is a case for transparent subsdies to keep the land in good heart and environmentally sustainable, not for blanket subsidies like the single farm payment.

The CAP costs €50bn a year and hardly represents value for money. 40 per cent or more of the EU budget represents a high opportunity cost. But, of course, we are where we are and withdrawing subsidies overnight would hit the rural economy hard. So it is incumbent on those who would withdraw from the EU to say what they would replace the CAP with in terms of domestic policy.

Thinking about the unthinkable

Fifty years ago saw the start of the Cuban missile crisis. It was a frightening time if you were fifteen years old, as I was, and whatever else one says about Jack Kennedy, one has to admire the way he managed the crisis and resisted the calls of the hawks for early military action. Now it's all old history and it was announced today that two of the Cold War missile sites have been given listed status.

Nuclear war strategy was referred to then as 'thinking about the unthinkable'. Perhaps we also now need to start thinking about another kind of unthinkable, Britain leaving the European Union and what sort of domestic agricultural policy might replace the CAP. Whatever one thinks of British membership of the EU, few would mourn leaving the CAP, but British farmers would be worried about what would take its place. No doubt some contingency thinking is already being undertaken.

My hunch is that if there was a straight yes-no choice, the majority of British voters (although perhaps not in Scotland) would vote to leave. There is some evidence to support this. Peter Kellner of YouGov has written an interesting contribution on underlying attitudes for the LSE European Politics blog: Kellner

In essence the message is that there are three attitude clusters in the electorate in terms of attitudes to the outside world and only one of those could be largely relied on to vote in favour. Kellner thinks that fear would shape a lot of decisions. Of course, that could be fear of the consequences of staying in or fear of the consequences of leaving. Much would depend on the campaign.

Of course, we may never get to a yes-no vote. Dave Cameron does not like the EU, but he does not want to withdraw. His favoured scenario is to 'renegotiate' after the next election when the Conservatives might have an overall majority. He would then put the renegotiated deal to the electorate. Harold Wilson took the stance of 'no entry on Tory terms' before the 1975 referendum and got a few goodies out of the EU, but essentially we stayed in on the terms agreed by Ted Heath. Dave would probably get some concessions out of the EU, but they would fall short of what Eurosceptics wanted.

Hence some Eurosceptics are calling for a yes-no referendum at the time of the next election. Conservatives are worried about a UKIP victory in the 2014 European Parliament elections, a more than likely scenario, and then losing votes to them in the following general election.

How this will all play out depends on a wide range of different factors affecting Conservative Party politics. If Labour wins, there is a different scenario (although if they were dependent on Lib Dem support, there would be another one again). Ed Miliband always jumps on any bandwagon that comes along, although usually what he does is call for a public inquiry rather than a referendum. There wouldn't be any judges left to staff the courts if all his requests were granted. However, Miliband could promise some sort of referendum, although its timing and nature would probably be left vague.

Anyway, the point is that Britain leaving the EU is a sufficiently serious possibility to start thinking what we would do then and that is what I plan to do over the next few months, starting with the nature of agricultural policy betweeen the end of the Second World War and our accession to the EU.

Dancing towards convergence

EU Farm Commissioner Dacion Ciolos is said to be resigned to the fact that the current proposal for internal convergence of direct aid payments will need to be watered down in order for a compromise to be reached, reports Agra Europe.

'It is no longer acceptable for two hectares of hill land in the same member state with the same agronomic potential to account for differences of €100 to €600 and, in some regions, even more,' argued the Commissioner at the 2012 Congress of EU umbrella farmers union Copa-Cogeca last week. 'Over the period 2014-2020, a genuine convergence campaign is quite simply unavoidable if we want to still be credible.' One might add that there are a lot of things about the CAP are incredible, but that hasn't stopped them remaining in place.

There appear to be two groups of member states working on alternatives to the Commission’s plans for internal convergence. Some 40 per cent of a country’s Pillar One envelope would be used for flat-rate aids in 2014 under the current proposal, but critics claim this will lead to subsidies being moved away from more productive areas.

But then, of course, there has always been confusion about whether the CAP is there to boost the competitiveness of EU agriculture or act as a form of social policy for marginal farmers. In practice it is more of the latter, but a remarkably inefficient one in terms of reaching its target at minimum cost.

The losses and gains incurred by farms due to the transition should be limited, Ireland, Spain, Lithuania, Denmark, Portugal and Italy are said to have argued at the recent Management Committee meeting. Under a proposal tabled by the six, countries would be allowed to ring-fence ‘greening’ payments for individual holdings rather than on a national or regional basis – cushioning the impact for livestock farms in particular.

Meanwhile, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovenia are pushing for member states to be able to apply a flat rate of national or regional subsidies in 2021, rather than 2019. Warning against what they say would be a “profound redistribution” proposed for some countries, governments would be able to choose between three alternative convergence models.

Only a handful of liberally-minded countries are understood to have defended the Commission’s proposed timetable for convergence, albeit conceding that some degree of flexibility is necessary.

The issue is likely to be a tricky one of the agenda of the Farm Council in Luxembourg later this month.

France and Germany do their deal

Long-term observers of the CAP know that any agreement between France and Germany can often shape the direction of the reform process. Even with many more member states, this still remains true. Earlier this week the two countries issued a joint statement calling for a freeze at 2013 levels in nominal terms Agreement

Calls for a nominal freeze in the budget, which will still mean a decline in real terms, have been growing in recent months and around half of governments voiced their support for the Commission plan at a General Affairs Council late last month.

The country’s two agriculture ministers – France’s Stéphane Le Foll (rather superior and disdainful in a typical French mode) and German counterpart Ilse Aigner – came to the agreement after meeting in Berlin. They cited the 'importance of the CAP for growth, employment and the environment and innovation in rural areas along with Europe's role in ensuring food security worldwide', in their statement. In other words, the traditional rather general but fine sounding justifications of a dysfunctional policy.

Their rejection of any reduction in Pillar One allocations was also notable taking into consideration the fact that Germany is the biggest contributor to EU funds, while France is the biggest beneficiary of direct aid payments. Germany and France join the likes of Austria, Belgium, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Romania and Spain in opposing cuts, leaving member states such as the UK, Netherlands and Sweden seeking a more austere budget with a reduced prospect of success.

Of course, British prime minister Dave Cameron is under heavy pressure from within his own party to take a tough line in budget negotiations. Indeed, Dave is no fan of the EU and reflects the traditional British distaste for the CAP in particular. Vetoing the budget would go down well at home, but it would also mean that the EU would revert to annual budgets determined by qualified majority voting, reduced the influence of Britain and its allies.

Meanwhile for an authoritative account of tensions between member states and the European Parliament over the CAP, this blog post by Christilla Roderer-Rynning is recommended: Parliament

Old divisions rear their head

Those who like to emphasise the way in which 'discourse' or ideas can shape policy have been able to trace significant changes in the debate about the Common Agricultural Policy, but this has not been reflected in real reform. Indeed, older discourses have been revived with the debate about food security. Last week's Farm Council saw a revival of the old debate between advocates of a more market oriented policy and those who want more subsidy and intervention.

There was some progress on CAP reform with most EU governments backing an overhaul of the CAP's 'less favoured areas' (LFA) scheme, but there was division over how best to deal with market shocks in future.

Most governments agreed that the overhaul of the LFA scheme should be based on new 'biophysical' factors but added that the backing would be dependent on them getting considerable flexibility to adapt the criteria and parameters to their territories, with French farm minister Stéphane Le Foll, whose country has been resistant to the overhaul, particularly vocal on this point.

A majority also agreed that member states needing more time to make the transition should be allowed to extend their deadline to December 2015, from the original January 2014, but German agriculture minister Ilse Aigner, backed by Poland and Austria, questioned the plan and claimed that more than just 'fine tuning' based on a common EU framework would be needed.

A clearer dividing line was found over how the EU should deal with agricultural market volatility, with Greece and Ireland backing calls for a “political stance” on volatility, while the UK and Netherlands insisted that farmers' decisions should be based purely on the market conditions.

Ministers were discussing the European Commission's plans to update the CAP's traditional market management tools under the 'Single CMO' Regulation - namely public intervention, private storage and export refunds. The plans for 2014 onwards include the introduction of automatic tendering for public intervention for skimmed milk powder and butter as well as an accelerated procedure for private storage aid.

While many member states consider the Commission's plans to be sufficient, several called for market intervention to go further than the proposals and involve automatic updates to reference prices for public intervention. The divisions on this point were largely along the traditional lines of those who favour the ‘free market’ approach and more ‘interventionist’ supporters.

'Greening' remains controversial

Last week’s informal Farm Council meeting in Cyprus – the first since the summer break – reminded decision-makers that gaining consensus over the ‘greening’ requirements for direct payments is one of the biggest obstacles for CAP reform.

As Cypriot farm minister Sofoclis Aletraris admitted to Agra Europe at the meeting, while the greening of the CAP is a desire for all member states, the exact definition of what ‘greening’ means, or should mean, varies across the EU. Indeed, it's a bit like being in favour of motherhood and apple pie. No one is likely to argue for 'browning' the CAP, but the devil is in the detail.

One of the issues is the impact on profitability. The current chair of the EU Farm Council also admitted that greening will be a “tax” for farmers and that the final system must ensure that farming is still profitable to avoid people leaving the profession.

EU Farm Commissioner Dacian Ciolos insists that progress on reaching an agreement is being made and that the European Commission plan to link 30 per cent of farm income support to three EU-wide environmental requirements is now better understood by governments and farmers than it was before. That doesn't mean they like it any more and it has been my view that is a rather blunt instrument as a means of achieving environmental objectives.

Ciolos again defended the plan at the meeting and reiterated the EU executive’s offer of ‘equivalence’ − whereby a farmer involved in Pillar Two agri-environment/climate or national certification schemes would qualify for one or more greening requirements − to satisfy the many critics.

Greening is not a measure against increased production but rather a way of maintaining sustainable production in the medium-term by protecting water, soil and biodiversity, he argued.

There is an underlying tension here between economic and environmental sustainability. Reconciling them is not easy and arguably needs a more fine grained approach with more sophisticated policy instruments.

Good Food March on Brussels

Protesters from a variety of environmental organisations from the Slow Food Movement to Friends of the Earth converged on Brussels this week in the Good Food March: Good Food

They consider that the CAP pays too much attention to the needs of agribusiness and want a CAP that is fairer to smaller producers and family farming while protecting the environment and the interests of developing countries.

It has to be said that the event was greeted with a certain dismissive cynicism in Brussels: Organic cake

The protesters place great faith in the involvement of the European Parliament in the decision-making process, but many of the traditional interests are strongly represented there and all it may do is water down and delay an already difficult reform process.

A video interview with a Friends of the Earth Europe representative on the march can be found here: Friends of the Earth

The structure of the wine market and the issue of quality

I have been reading an interesting paper about 'Quality Classifications in Competition: Price Formation in the German Wine Market' by Jorg Rossel and Jens Beckert from the Max Planck Institute in Cologne.

One conclusion that can be drawn from the paper is that the market has some very distinctive characteristics. This does not mean that no more general lessons can be drawn from it, particularly given the EU's drive to promote high quality, value added production in European agriculture.

Although the authors don't say this, one lesson you can draw from their paper is that if you price something high enough, the initial reaction of consumers will be that it is high quality. Consider the market in jams and marmalades. There are commodity products sold in supermarkets, although there is some price and quality differentiation. Then there are high quality products sold in farmers' markets and (in the UK) in National Trust shops. These can be two or three times as expensive as the commodity product, but there is no system of classification as there is for wines.

A central theme of the paper is the existence of two systems of classification in Germany, one established by the regulatory authorities, ranging from table wines to quality wine with distinction. Then there is a separate system established by artisan producers which place considerable emphasis on the concept of 'terroir' which has been so important to French wines. Their approach is 'based on the conviction that the soil and microclimatic conditions as well as the craftsmanship of the wine producer determine wine quality.'

But how can the consumer tell that something is good quality? There are, of course, plenty of wine experts whose advice is widely disseiminated in the print media and online. However, the literature which the authors review very effectively casts doubt on this expertise. Most of a group of students of enology from Bordeaux were not able to distinguish white wine from red wine just by taste. A series of experiments show that wine experts do not exhibit a consistent quality scale in their judgments.

Quality assessments are very contingent. Today dry wines are seen as being of high quality and enjoy high legitimacy in the market. Only a century ago sweet wines merited high regard. One might add that medical advice is to drink red rather than white wine and dry white rather than sweet, but this is not a factor that the authors mention.

The authors make it clear that wine drinking habits are influenced by social class and status. The phrase 'wine snob' comes to mind, although it is not one that the authors use. The authors note, 'Becoming competent in the terroir philosophy, and the status differences of wine established through it, demands high cultural capital and is therefore also socially exclusive.'

Quality in the terroir philosophy, the authors argue, remains an abstract and evasive concept: 'it can be understood only by actors possessing high cultural capital in the field and can be bought only by those consumers with enough economic capital to pay for the "taste" of authenticity. The system allows for evocative fantasies to be aroused based on the qualities symbolically represented in a wine. These fantasies can be translated into status differences and thereby provide "good reasons" to purchase the high priced wine.'

The authors' underlying theoretical perspective, drawn from economic sociology, is that 'In an increasing number of markets, there is uncertainty among buyers as to the quality of products.' They link this increasing uncertainty with an increasing aesthiticization and moralization of everyday life and consumer products.'

As the authors note there are 'markets where the quality of the product is assessed based on "functional performance" that can be measured objectively.' But, in agriculture, this often involves products that are transformed before reaching the final consumer. For example, wheat can be assessed by its moisture content but this is of little relevance to the final consumer who buys bread according to its perceived quality in the different forms in which it is offered.

Wine is a very distinctive product in which much of the perception of quality is very subjective and open to manipulation of the image of the craft skills of the individual winemaker and the specific qualities of a certain vineyard. Specific knowledge is required to make judgments about wine. Neverthless, in European food markets more generally, the market for high quality products is limited by income and the willingness of consumers to purchase an image of the production process as well as the product itself.

Cypriot presidency contemplates CAP budget cuts

The informal meeting of farm ministers in Nicosia from 9 to 11 September which marks the effective start of the Cypriot presidency after the August holiday break is going to focus on water scarcity, land abandonment and soil erosion. These are important topics, against the background of climate change, and especially important to southern member states, but they are not at the heart of the CAP reform agenda.

However, the word is that the Cypriot presidency thinks that there will have to be much bigger cuts to the CAP budget in the next seven year cycle than contemplated hitherto. This comes against the background of talk of a €100m cut in the EU budget to match austerity at home. As the largest budget line, the CAP would have to take its fair share of the pain.

It is being said that direct payments to farmers and rural development would take the biggest hit which makes sense as they are the largest components of the budget. There might be more flexibility to switch between these two budget lines.

Needless to say, some member states are already gearing up to oppose any such move. The other difficulty is that there is a great temptation in such circumstances to reduce spending by x per cent across the board without considering which spending offers a cost effective way of achieving policy objectives. But, then, that has been the story of the CAP.

Double change at Defra worries farmers

The double change at Defra of secretary of state and farm minister has worried farmers and their friends, although new secretary of state Owen Patterson is said to be on message on badger culls: Defra

Patterson asked Hilary Benn 500 questions on badger culls when he was at Defra and has been on a study tour in the United States to look at bovine TB and its control.

Caroline Spelman was never fully convincing as a safe pair of hands in what admittedly is a disparate and challenging portfolio. However, what really worries farmers is the departure of Jim Paice as farm minister who was seen as having an understanding of the industry and a sympathy with farmers as one himself. Ironically, Dave Cameron sacked him by mobile phone when he was announcing the new code of practice for dairy farmers which many saw as his biggest achievement. Tributes to him from farming leaders here: Paice

However, the arrival of David Heath in his place means that the Lib Dems at last have a representative in Defra, a suprising omission given where they hold many of their seats. It also means an end to the experiment of Isles of Scilly MP Andrew George as Lib Dem liaison person, something that never really worked.

Whether the presence of a Lib Dem will mean any change in policy remains to be seen. The real need now is for Britain's voice to be heard effectively in the CAP negotiations in order to bring them to some kind of reasonable conclusion and not hopelessly behind schedule.

Elsewhere Lib Dem Jo Swinson, until now PPS to Nick Clegg, is reportedly in at BIS and will be responsible for the Grocery Adjudicator Bill, a key topic for those in the food chain.

Is the complexity deliberate?

For all the talk of a drive towards simplification, complexity is a built in feature of the Common Agricultural Policy. It makes it more difficult for critics to assess what the real effects of decisions are. It becomes more challenging to mount a sustained and informed critique.

Bringing agriculture into the co-decision mechanism at the European Parliament was unavoidable given that it was a supposed boost to democracy, but an alternative narrative would be that it gave more opportunities for special interests to defend the status quo.

MEPs have tabled no less than 7,415 amendments to the proposed 2014 reform of the CAP before departing for their long summer recess. It will take until September just to translate them.

With 2,292 amendments on direct payments to farmers alone, changes are proposed to almost every part of the Commission's proposals. There are those who wonder whether the sheer volume of amendments is a deliberate strategy on the part of some member states to defend the status quo. France, Germany and Italy come to mind.

It is going to be difficult to complete the reform process on time. Moreover, what was a less than radical reform in the first place is going to be watered down even further.

Financiers spring to defence of ETPs

The controversy over exchange traded products (ETPs) and their effect on food prices continues with some financial providers say they will not withdraw them. In a report issued this April, Finance Watch, a Brussels-based public interest advocacy group argued that excessive commodity speculation raises prices artificially and damages the market for real buyers and sellers. Read more here: Commodities

Others take the opposite view. They point out that the size of the financial market in commodities is tiny in comparison with the physical market and it is the physical market that sets price - the tail does not wag the dog. Nevertheless, the financial market could still have a disproportionate effect in uncertain conditions.

Against that Guy Wolf from commodities broker Marex Spectron commented, 'The futures market is a forum for buyers and sellers to hedge their exposure that benefits both parties and in fact we need more speculation to help absorb volatility.' Indeed, even a report called Farming Money from Friends of the Earth Europe (FoEE) admits that speculators can bridge the gap between buyers and sellers and provide liquidity in the market.

Twenty-five groups including FoEE are urging member states to use this autumn's review of Mifid (the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive) to curb speculation in food and other commodity derivative markets. They are advocating strict position limits and banning financial entities from speculating in commodity markets. Read more here: Speculation

The largest providers of ETPs have made it clear that they have no plans to withdraw these instruments after a number of operators said that they would. Volksbanken of Austria announced that it was withdrawing investment products linked to agricultural commodities and Germany's Commerzbank removed agricultural products from its Comstage commodity exchange traded fund in July. In March Deutsche Bank, the second largest provider of ETPs in Europe, said it would refrain from launching any new ones based on basic foodstuffs.

However, ETF Securities, the largest provider of commodity traded ETPs in Europe and iShares, the world's biggest ETP manager, said they had no plans to scrap their offerings. Their defenders argue that investment in agricultural commodity ETPs do not result in hoarding because they invest in futures unlike physical gold ETPs which hold bullion in a vault.

Globalization of agriculture inevitably led to its involvement in more sophisticated financial instruments which some would describe as socially harmful. Others see them as an efficient market clearing mechanism. Much depends on how influential they are in the market. At present they are not dominant and an outright ban would be an over reaction.

Banks withdraw food commodity funds

There has been considerable discussion about whether speculation drives food commodity prices up, although no definitive answer. My hunch would be that it tends to make them more volatile which creates difficulties for both producers and consumers.

Now a number of European banks are withdrawing vehicles that make it relatively easy for investors to speculate on food prices: Speculation

The decision represents a victory for campaigning groups such as Food Watch, Oxfam and the World Development Movement. The banks were concerned about reputational damage, no doubt enhanced by upward pressure on prices following the drought in the United States.

Dairy farmers under pressure

The recent cuts in farm gate prices for milk have placed dairy farmers under real pressure and there is no doubt that many of them are not covering the cost of production. Blockades and evident consumer sympathy have stirred many supermarkets to increase the price they pay for liquid milk.

However, that is only part of the story. Half of all milk produced goes for manufacturing and that has always attracted a lower price (although the old Milk Marketing Board had a complicated system that varied the price according to the end use of the milk so more was paid if it was used for chocolate crumb than cheddar cheese).

Manufacturing prices are driven by global markets which are in turn affected by low cost mega dairies in California and elsewhere. There is hope that prices may firm up after the seasonal production peak in Europe. Prices in June were firmer for some products, particularly butter and cream, but average dairy commodity prices fell back by 5.9 per cent at Fonterra's latest Global Dairy Trade auction earlier this month, largely as a resut of increased supply. Prices may well remain stagnant until September.

Factors to take into account include whether product stocks will be sold before the next flush of milk begins in the southern hemisphere where countries including New Zealand, Argentina and Uruguay are efficient producers. The emerging economy growth rate is also an important consideration as it drives greater consumption of dairy products. The recession in Europe also has an impact and British deliveries in the two weeks to the end of June were down 2.1 per cent on the same period last year.

It is also worth bearing in mind that farmers are encountering these financial difficulties despite substantial EU subsidies.

The challenge of feeding the world

The urgent need to increase farm production in order to feed a growing global population was a recurring theme last week with a number of reports and opinions published on the subject.

The words ‘productivity’ and ‘sustainability’ were the key elements of the latest Agricultural Outlook report from the OECD and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), covering the years 2012-2021. The UN predicts that the population of the world will increase by around a third from current levels, which will mean farm production will need to increase by 60 per cent over the next 40 years.

This translates into an additional one billion tonnes of cereals and 200 million tonnes of meat a year by 2050 compared to 2005-2007 levels. In order to achieve this level, the report suggests a number of ways that this can be achieved, particularly in developing countries, including supplemental irrigation, improving storage and transport links and the more efficient use of nutrients.

Whether or not this level of production can be reached is another matter and one that many analysts feel is not possible without a considerable overhaul of agricultural policy, the rapid introduction of new technology and in a way that meets the rather loose term of ‘sustainable’ or the contested term 'sustainable intensfication'.

Not so sweet

In article in this week’s Agra Europe, European Commission spokesperson Roger Waite has denied that sugar refiners in the EU market are being treated unfairly and claims that persistently high world market prices are to blame for supply difficulties.

The spokesperson for agriculture and rural development argues that the different mechanisms created by the Commission to release additional product to supply the internal market – the release of out-of-quota beet sugar and the reduced-duty tenders to source imported cane sugar – are not discriminatory, but are “two different systems suited to two different realities”.

Waite was responding to an Agra Europe article written in May by Gerald Mason of sugar refiners Tate & Lyle which was highly critical of the Commission’s management of the sugar market.

Waite concedes that the loss of exclusive rights to imported cane for refining after the 2006 reforms has created some difficulties for the former ‘traditional’ refiners. But he notes that these companies received EU restructuring aid totalling €150 million in the aftermath of the reforms.

In addition, the article reiterates the EU executive’s determination to liberalise the internal EU sugar market by abolishing production quotas from 2015. This will be welcome news for many sugar-using companies within the EU but conflicts with many MEPs from sugar-producing member states who are pushing for an extension to 2020.

The sugar lobby has always been a powerful one, but lost ground after the WTO judgement on the EU's sugar regime.

Farmers go for pre-nups as land prices soar

The rise in the price of farmland is leading increasing numbers of farmers to sign pre- and post-nuptial agreements to protect their wealth from enlarged divorce payments to their spouses. A roll in the hay can clearly have consequences not envisaged in the past.

Farmers who have not completed such an agreement face the unwelcome prospect of selling farmland or borrowing money to finance a divorce settlement. Farming divorces are complicated by the fact that the farm is usually the marital home, meaning its value is taken into account when deciding financial settlements for ex-wives.

Selling off part of the farm is not really a solution. 25 years ago a farm might have been viable between 500 and 700 acres, but today something like 1,200 acres is needed to sustain a profitable business, even with CAP subsidies (which are related to the farmable area anyway). If the farm is reduced in size, it may no longer be able to support heirs, particularly if more than one wants to be involved in the farm business.

According to the National Farmers Union it has had more calls from members on this topic since the 2010 ruling involving German heiress Katrin Radmacher which stated that courts can take pre-nups into account when deciding settlements. It has handled 40 referrals from members seeking advice on divorce and pre-nups over the last three years.

This gives a new meaning to the term selective benefit in the pressure group literature. Anyone can get advice on a divorce from a family lawyer, but they may not encounter that many cases involving farms and be relatively unfamiliar with the special considerations involved. That is where an organisation like the NFU can help, showing the relevance of Olson's by-product theory of selective incentives which seeks to explain how lobbying activity can be sustained in the face of the free rider problem

Fields of gold

English farmland has gone up in value by more than 10,000 per cent in the last 60 years. Research from agent Knight Frank shows that an investor who paid £56 an acre for land when the Queen ascended the throne in 1952 would get £6,073 if they sold today, although that is slightly below last June's average figure of £6,156.

Land values started to soar once the UK joined the European Community in 1973. Farmers were then able to benefit from CAP subsidies and land values rose by 390 per cent between 1972 and 1982. There had been subsidies before then, of course, but deficiency payments were more closely related to market fluctuations than blanket EU subsidies. Another consideration was that farmland looked like a relatively safe asset class against the background of the economic turmoil of the 1970s

The 1980s were less buoyant, but in the 1990s demand started to outpace supply, pushing up prices. In 1995 flexible farm business tenancies were introduced which made it more attractive for farmers to rent out land. This led to less land being available on the market at a time when demand was rising.

The recent debate over global food scarcity has reawakened interest in land, along with the drive for alternative fuel sources. However, it may be that prices have peaked. Yields are very low, 1 per cent at best, and farm businesses have an erratic performance due to the impact of the weather and other factors beyond the control of the farmer.

There were important tax incentives relating to land ownership, relating principally to income tax, capital gains tax and inheritance tax. Measures to cap reliefs from trading losses at 25 per cent of income or £50,000 whichever is the greater, will restrict the possibility of offsetting losses on farm businesses.

Many purchases are, however, are lifestyle related. The British tradition of spending a weekend in the country has survived and one way to demonstrate that you have arrived is to buy a country estate. There will always be a strong demand for estates with sporting rights, particularly if they are within an easy drive of London.

The other side of the coin is that it is difficult to break into farming other than by inheritance. Tenancies do not become available that often and local authorities are cutting back on their portfolios of entry level farms to release their capital value. Whilst statistics sometimes exaggerate the ageing profile of British farmers because some of them are in semi-retirement, the industry needs a constant influx of innovative younger people.

It's not an easy life, though. Hours can be long, there is a high rate of deaths and injuries from accidents and there is a lot of often monotonous work. To succeed you need a combination of farming, technological, business and marketing skills. But for some people it is the only life. Two of my nephews grew up on a very successful Welsh farm that has been in the family for generations. One stayed on the farm and loves it. I will be visiting an exhibition of pottery by the other one later this month.