DEAR EDITOR
I read recently about a mega farm being built in Algeria, in the Saharan desert. Does the European Commission think that food comes from supermarkets? The project will involve 270,000 cows and 117,000ha of desert being irrigated.
This is the size of Co Waterford, including the mountains. The logistics are mind-boggling.
The cost is supposed to be €3.5bn. The financial cost will be huge, to say nothing of the environmental cost. The milk will probably cost a lot more to produce than it can be bought for.
Why then are they doing it? In my opinion, they are doing it for food security. They can see that the policies being pursued in Europe will bring about a massive reduction in food production; food may not be available to import at any price.
Countries or blocs like the EU need to be able to defend themselves; they need the energy to power themselves, but above all, they need to produce enough food to feed their citizens.
The policy in Brussels seems to want to divert money from food production to defence and to divert land from food to solar panels. The most important part of defence is food.
The problem with the mandarins in Brussels is that they have not seen hunger in Europe in their lifetimes and think it can’t happen.
I generally like to look for the positive, but I can see no upside here. The proposed 24% cut in CAP payments, coupled with 25% inflation during the lifetime of the current CAP, means, effectively, that we will be down 50% relative to everyone else. This is catastrophic.
They need not worry about funding generational renewal; it will be dead in the water.
