If food security is a goal, then Europe needs agrobusiness too, and it might give to need those productive entities a leg-up in a world economy where its competitors can depend on cheap labour and massive direct or indirect subsidies.
God knows that the USA send massive support to its farmers (who are happily draining the continental aquifer dry), and while Brazil does not provide cash subsidies to its mega soya and citrus farmers, it gives them massive subsidies in kind by allowing them land at low costs and not regulating labour wages or conditions.
It makes sense to pay for good food, not to pay for bad food, and then pay again to clean up water, pay again to help distroyed communities in Africa that cannot compete with industrial agro exports, and pay for the general sense of entitlement and lack of accountability of these people. (And see at the same time the samll farmers go through unbelievable pain and sacrifice because their causes - and subsidies - are hijacked by the agro industrial complex, which treat them like foot soldiers) In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
As a North American living in the belly of the beast... smack dab in the middle of our agri-industrial complex... you don't want to be subsidizing big agri-business. Believe me... we been there...HELL WE ARE THERENOW... and it sucks.
On the other hand subsizing good small cheese makers... I am all in favor of that. And wine... and olives... and local produce...
Let the morons outside my town make the crappy frankenfood... the ag commodity business is just one more race to the bottom from what I can tell. "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." - Peter Steiner
You have no idea how bad it is where they are drawing down 'the Ogallalah'... that aquifer you mentioned. In some places the water table has dropped 600 feet... Some of the rivers... like the Platte in Nebraska that used be 'an inch deep and a mile wide'... are almost dry.
Lastly - where there is water, it is often terribly polluted... even the ground water. There are so many abandoned farms (as folks leave the land for the city) with old wells that the farm run off easily finds its way into the aquifer. Parts of Missouri River basin have the most polluted ground water in America... and they aren't even close to a city.
I frequent all these areas as part of my job... it is like the biological equivalent of Chernobyl. Not that bad yet but heading that way... You might have heard of the Buffalo Commons movement...it isn't that far fetched. "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog." - Peter Steiner
