Seanad debates
Wednesday, 12 February 2003
Fischler Proposals for Agriculture: Motion.
Falling incomes have driven increasing numbers off the land, something to which Senator Bannon referred. The CAP has encouraged large-scale, increasingly intensive farming that produces commodities of dubious quality. Some 80% of EU subsidies go to 20% of farmers. In other words, they go to large farmers, as Senator Bannon said. The CAP encourages wasteful over-production of food. It is a peculiar irony that a system designed to make Europe self-sufficient in food is characterised more than anything else by the fact that it produces too much food.
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