The Economist seems to think that there is no benefit to the protection of local agriculture unless it is "market-oriented". I'm curious if the sense on the ground is that the CAP is actually a good thing for the European consumer and environment, or whether it is actually some archaic thing that needs to be totally revamped, or is it something else entirely that I just don't see?
My only exposure was my trip through France down to St. Emelion and a couple of days walking and biking around the Bourdeaux region-seemed awfully nice to me. "I said, 'Wait a minute, Chester, You know I'm a peaceful man...'" Robbie Robertson
As the milk "lakes" and butter "mountains" grew, incentives have been changed, with subsidies moving away from production volumes to land area, and away from outright export subsidies.
France protects its high quality food sector via the AOC (appellation d'origine contrôlée - controlled origin denomination) mechanisms which allocate specific areas to specific products, with more stringent standards and ruthless trademark protection.
The CAP was designed for France, to a large extent, but producers in other countries have adapted to (and adopted) it and, if you look at the size of countries, France get fewer subsidies now than most of the big countries.
So, anyway, the explicit goal of CAP was "efficiency", and it has worked in that respect, so the Economist article is quite entertaining to read, of course. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
