This is also does in the face of free markets. If we keep process artificially low we won't see any explanation in production. That keeps prices high and sticks us in a loop where we need subsidies because prices are too high and can't reduce price because there's no market incentive.
European production costs around labour, regulations etc would be drastically undercut by foreign low cost markets and you would lose food sovereignty due to foreign imports.
Of course subsidies do introduce distortion but they are often simpler globally than tic for tat tariffs.
Say we subsidize corn because otherwise our corn industry would be decimated by cheap labor overseas. We successfully walled off one industry, but that cheaper foreign labor is still available for other production. Maybe workers that would be paid overseas to grow corn are instead paid to produce cheaper clothing that we can't compete with. We can't keep subsidizing one industry at a time in hopes of dodging a fundamental supply abstracts the other country has.
Tariffs can be an option there *if* imposed on all imports from one country. They have their own practical issues though, not least of all is enforcement. NATO made a huge deal about banning Russian oil when the war started but they still sell it just fine, often as crude oil to another country that refines it and still sells it to us anyway.
Though chemical fertilizer is likely a common weak point for food security with many countries. But this is not a new problem, the US pacific island grab in the 1800s to source Guano shows how regenerating soil macro nutrients has been a centuries old problem that countries have had grapple with.
To clarify, I don't recall if that was actually kep in country or the net import/export comparison, we may have been making enough to cover something like 90% but exporting that overseas.
Anyway, 100% agree fertilizer has been a problem for a long time. As long as we treat food production as an broken loop where farms are dependant on outside resources rather than building sustainable farming systems we'll always be stuck trying to steal someone else's nutrients in the form of fertilizer.
Edit: actually my mistake, that point was made in a separate thread. I think my point still stands though.
I'm happy to be wrong there though it's been a while now since I went down that rabbit hole!
I am not sure why people don't seem to understand this. If a nation ever finds itself dependent on a neighbour for water, food, electricity, oil etc, they are going to be in big trouble when it comes to any sort of negotiations.
The truth is that agricultural land is under tremendous pressure. It is far more lucrative to just build apartments or commercial real estate on farming land than it is to sustain agriculture. Subsidies are used to incentivize farmers to continue farming instead of disposing of their land.
Also, how self-sufficient are you really if your entire agricultural system is predicated on access to chemical fertilizers, which in turn is produced from natural gas of which you have to import close to 100%? The subsidy system is thoroughly dysfunctional and doesn't solve a real problem anymore, except by supporting existing economic structures.
Nations which don't have substantial access to food grown within their borders will place themselves at severe disadvantage when it comes to any sort of global negotiations.
Take the example of Qatar - when it was under sanction by many of the Arab countries, they could not import food.. and they were forced to get into agriculture and now agriculture thrives in Qatar even though the climate is not conducive.
https://thefarmermagazine.com.au/qatars-farmers-have-gone-fr...
I think a key takeaway from the pandemic is that you don’t want to be reliant of import from strategic ressources and food is priority number one.
European subsidies are mostly going to France which is a huge wheat producer.
Farming is an area where I can predict there are going to be a lot of tension in the EU between ecological ambition and the cold reality of having to feed everyone.
Just politics gets in the way as usual. But as the climate deniers power wanes it's a powerful tool ready to be used for good.
I agree we're raising far too many cattle, but just wanted to point out it's not very simple.
For the GIEC it’s GHG mitigation and the vegan diet beats them all, while « all diets needs to provide full complement of nutritional quality, including micronutrients ».
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/4/2022/11/SRCC... (Page 488)
Protected lands of the Puerto Rican rain forest saw huge declines in insect and consequently birds and there is no farming there.
The explanation is simple. Heat waves are killing the bugs. They simply can't cope with 1 or 2 weeks of intense heat. You also see this with lizards and frogs.
Since they are low on the food chain this translates to bird declines, and other animal declines.
PS. I choose not to use "Climate Change" because it's too neutral and is the preferred term of the fossil fuel industry for a reason. I like "Global Warming" or "Climate Crisis" or "Climate Emergency" or "Climate Chaos". The problem is too serious to use neutral language.
And another side effect of subsidies is that it counteracts development aid sent to places that the EU competes with on farmed products. Instead of boosting their economies by importing stuff from those countries we kill their exports with subsidized local produce and then spend a lot on development aid. And fragile economies in Africa of course create all sorts of collateral issues including wars and refugees. All to protect local farmers so they can produce things like sugar beet so we can have subsidized local sugar production instead of just importing that from outside Europe.