There’s a piece in today’s Christian Science Monitor on the E.U.’s new pledge to give 1 billion euros in unused farm subsidies to African farmers.

“In the past, that €1 billion would have gone to paying for the so-called “grain mountains” and “milk lakes” that resulted when EU farmers produced more than they could sell. The European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which consumes 40 percent of the EU’s total budget, provides subsidies for farmers who produce surpluses of certain crops.

But with spiraling food prices (7.1 percent higher in EU member states this April than the previous year), European agriculture no longer needs the safety net. And with many parts of the world suffering food shortages, the EU, said agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel at a conference on the crisis last week, “needs to act now to boost harvests [in developing countries] over the next seasons.”

More info in the piece.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 11:45 am and is filed under European Union, Agricultural. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.