| ▲ | chipdart a day ago |
| > Denmarks agricultural performance is not great at all. it's way too expensive to produce stuff. if it wasn't for EU subsidies the agricultural sector in Denmark would loose over 50% of their profits. Agriculture in the EU is renowned for not being financially unjustified. For decades it's been a finantial no-brainer to import the bulk of agricultural products from south America and Africa. This is not new or the result of some major epiphany, it's the natura consequence of having an advanced economy and a huge population with high population density. The EU already imports 40% of the agricultural products it consumes. EU subsidies were created specifically to mitigate the strategic and geopolitical risk of seeing Europe blockaded. Agricultural subsidies exist to create a finantial incentive to preserve current production capacity when it makes no finantial sense, and thus mitigate a strategic vulnerability. |
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| ▲ | llm_trw 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| You'd think that people would have realized this after Europe avoided mass death from Russian gas being cut off only because the winter was mild. |
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| ▲ | neoromantique 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Considering that we're doing the barest of the minimum about it three years in, yeah, you'd think. | |
| ▲ | Y-bar 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > the winter was mild. Sure about that? I remember a cold winter. > Blizzards, record winds, red weather warnings and biting cold. The long winter of 2023/2024 has featured heavy precipitation and a number of extreme weather events. https://www.uu.se/en/news/2024/2024-03-04-a-researcher-expla... And > Large parts of Europe are starting the 2023-2024 winter season with an abundance of snow and cold, a stark contrast from last year, which was abnormally warm and snowless. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/12/04/europe-sno... | |
| ▲ | baq 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | We’re off to a not-great start this year: https://gas.kyos.com/gas/eu | |
| ▲ | 4gotunameagain 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Interesting way to frame "Russian gas being cut off" instead of "most likely US orchestrated biggest ally to ally sabotage in history". I'm still mad about it, yes. Germany's dependence on Russian gas was a terrible thing, but risking my livelihood for 4D geopolitics chess is much worse. | | |
| ▲ | actionfromafar 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Germany's dependence on Russian gas was (failed) 4D geopolitical chess in itself. I'm mad at that. | |
| ▲ | account42 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | This doesn't change the strategic need to maintain local production though. |
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| ▲ | Retric 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Resistance to a blockade doesn’t require subsidies for growing flowers etc. Subsidizing exports similarly has very different goals. |
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| ▲ | _DeadFred_ 19 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Sure it does. The goal is keep the farmland available and productive along with keeping agricultural infrastructure. The USA helped win WW2 because our car factory lines were retooled to make war machines. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | Demand for war materials goes up in a war, but the population and thus food demand isn’t going to drastically spike. There’s a reasonable argument for having a food stockpile in case of emergencies, but extra farmland is harder to justify. | | |
| ▲ | _DeadFred_ 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The demand won't spike, but the need to switch to local production necessitates some way to locally produce. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | That’s limited by the country’s basic requirements not the total amount of farmland available. People may prefer wine and beef in surplus resulting in an obesity epidemic, but that’s not required here. You don’t want 350 lb soldiers or recruits. |
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| ▲ | Spooky23 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In the case of the US, we turned much of the richest farmland into subdivisions. The breadbasket of the nation is powered by an aquifer that will be depleted in my kids lifetime. Most of our green goods come from the deserts of California and Arizona, and won’t exist if the Colorado River water system breaks down. | | |
| ▲ | Retric 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | That aquifer is being depleted because of farm subsidies not in spite of them. The US’s domestic demand for food is vastly below the actual production, exports and biofuels need not be maintained in a war. |
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| ▲ | ramblenode 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You are going to stockpile years worth of food for an entire country? | | |
| ▲ | Retric 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, if you expect farmland to produce 0 food then having extra farmland is pointless. 0 * 2 X = 0 * X = 0. The point of extra farmland is to make up for some expected shortfall, but you’re better off stockpiling food during productive periods than have reserve capacity for use when something else is going wrong. PS: It is common to have quite large stockpiles of food. Many crops come in once a year and then get used up over that year. But that assumes a 1:1 match between production and consumption, a little extra production = quite a large surplus in a year. |
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| ▲ | Spooky23 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The government has all sorts of policy goals. Resilience, employment, etc. In the US, Nixon era policy and legal thinking drives all things. Price is king, except it isn’t. Our crazy governance model means that corn is better represented than humans, so our food is more expensive, less nutritious, and our supply chains are incredibly fragile. |
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| ▲ | rkagerer 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think you meant financial |
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| ▲ | whatwhaaaaat 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Let me get this right. To save the planet Denmark wants to stop producing food locally and instead import more? So those pig farts gotta go but the bunker fuel used to ship grain from a slash and burn rainforest farm in Brazil is a-ok. Utterly brain dead. So much so that you know someone’s getting paid from these decisions. |
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| ▲ | Galaxeblaffer 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | you got it.. and grain is not the only thing we get shipped from Brazil.. to look green, we've replaced most our coal burning for energy with bio fuels, essentially wood and that gets shipped in from Brazil as well.. very green.. because fuck nuclear, because of.. checks notes.. reasons |
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| ▲ | panick21_ a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > specifically to mitigate the strategic and geopolitical risk of seeing Europe blockaded No, its because far lobbies are an important political block |
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| ▲ | sshine a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Both can be true. Protecting your agricultural capacity is what convinces the part of the population that does not directly benefit from the subsidies. | | |
| ▲ | panick21_ a day ago | parent [-] | | That's just admitting that it is just justification. | | |
| ▲ | llm_trw 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yes and? If it keeps 20% of the country alive during a twice in a century event that it's a good justification. |
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| ▲ | chipdart a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | > No, its because far lobbies are an important political block Wrong. If you try to educate yourself, you will notice that EU's common agricultural policy even went to the extent of paying subsidies to small property owners to preserve their properties as agricultural land. This goes way beyond subsidizing production, or anything remotely related to your conspiracy theory. Just because someone benefits from subsidy programs that does not mean that any conspiracy theory spun around the inversion of cause and effect suddenly makes sense. I recommend you invest a few minutes to learn about EU's common agricultural policy before trying to fill that void with conspiracies. | | |
| ▲ | panick21_ a day ago | parent [-] | | They can write all they want. The fact is, the countries wouldn't cant get rid of their farm policies because of voting. And the EU, is an outgrowth of those already existing countries. EU policy is not handed down from a white tower. Of course you can't actually say that. | | |
| ▲ | darkwater 20 hours ago | parent [-] | | Farmers and people supporting farmers are still a small minority and while they can probably swing some election in some country if they were to massively support only one party or coalition, the money comes for the strategic importance. It would be naive to think it's just "for the votes". | | |
| ▲ | panick21_ 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | It was a long time ago that I have looked into this. My understanding from the political science is that countries where farmers votes aren't as important, also have far less subsidizes. Groups that already have subsidizes are better at defending them. Even if in absolute terms their numbers aren't as big. |
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