Efforts to boost farm production in Europe have failed in spite of record market prices and a move by Brussels to let farmers use more of their land to grow crops. The European Union last year scrapped a long-standing rule requiring farmers to set aside 10 per cent of their land in an attempt to increase output and cool prices. But data released on Monday showed that French and Germans farmers sowed less than 2 per cent more winter crops in spite of the measures.The weak response makes it likely that prices for wheat, barley, rapeseed and other crops will remain high. The French agriculture statistics office reported a "modest" rise of 1.2 per cent in winter crop sowing, although it warned farmers could still increase their spring crops. France is the largest agriculture producer in Europe. Germany reported a mere 1.9 per cent rise in sowing.
The European Union last year scrapped a long-standing rule requiring farmers to set aside 10 per cent of their land in an attempt to increase output and cool prices. But data released on Monday showed that French and Germans farmers sowed less than 2 per cent more winter crops in spite of the measures.The weak response makes it likely that prices for wheat, barley, rapeseed and other crops will remain high.
The French agriculture statistics office reported a "modest" rise of 1.2 per cent in winter crop sowing, although it warned farmers could still increase their spring crops. France is the largest agriculture producer in Europe. Germany reported a mere 1.9 per cent rise in sowing.
The system of subsidising "set-aside", or fallow, land began over fifteen years ago when the CAP switched to aiding surface, not product prices. Logically enough farmers chose all the tiny fields, the irregularly-shaped bits, etc, to classify as "set-aside" -- and, once set aside, you couldn't chop and change whenever you felt like it. Since then farmers have invested in ever-larger tractors and machinery, and those small fields are even less easily mechanisable than fifteen years ago.
There are also wetlands that have ecological protection in the "set-aside" category.
So only part of "set-aside" land can profitably be brought back into production (how much I don't know). This is where farmers set aside a strip on the edge of a larger field, or a field that it is now easy to join up with another.
Otherwise, given the price of wheat, I should think they'd be scrambling to sow.
