A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI #182: Common agricultural policy (CAP): the issues come to a head (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

The growing intensity of farmers' demonstrations in all European 
countries is an indication of a growing crisis in the Union which risks 
overwhelming it. What happens is the result of some choices that need to 
be examined to understand how to take action and overcome the crisis. To 
understand, we need to go back to the project of the leadership 
currently governing Europe which, even before the pandemic crisis, 
considered the progressive and growing phenomenon of globalization as a 
danger to be faced. The excessive weight of logistics in the dynamics of 
the economy had led to a reflection, accentuated by the pandemic, on the 
unsustainability of economic relations between the different areas of 
the planet as they had been structured as a result of wild and 
ungoverned globalization. The pandemic has revealed the structural 
weakness of the system and led the European Union to reflect on the 
effects of excessive production delocalisation. From this reflection was 
born the proposal to adopt a new system of economic relations summarized 
in the formula of green politics and which we prefer to define more 
fully as "neocurtense economy".

The transition to the neocurtense economy

With this term we define one of the possible models for managing 
deglobalization; it is a different and more complex way to define the 
green economy, to which the Union refers, because it includes some 
organizational and structural characteristics that do not appear 
evident, placing the energy transition at the almost exclusive center of 
the intervention on the economy . This strategy of productive and social 
restructuring has been developed
in Europe, aims to overcome the issue of energy needs through the 
adoption of a green economy, but also envisages the partial return of 
essential strategic productions to the territory of the Union, reducing 
the impact of logistics in the production process and taking advantage 
of the experience gained with the pandemic which advises not to 
outsource the entire production cycle of essential goods to guarantee 
essential services and needs in order to maintain their availability.
The neocurtense economy presupposes the construction of a peculiar 
production model, which incorporates production schemes of pre-existing 
economic and social relations and uses the coexistence of differentiated 
exploitation models, allows technologically "backward" production 
systems, such as home working, to coexist with " highly technological 
and automated production islands.
From the point of view of the social structure of the exploitation of 
resources in the territory, these productive aggregates, or "islands", 
should be economically organized in order to escape the considerable 
fiscal pressure exerted by the State, they outsource the registered 
office of the company, in order to escape to the fiscal impositions of 
the State, seen as depleting the wealth produced. The distinctly class 
nature of the project emerges from the choice not to take care of 
distributing the income produced across the territories, but to limit 
itself to promoting the greatest possible profit extraction.
In the neo-Curtense economy, the territory and its management are of 
fundamental importance as they provide the set of consumers and users 
with products, distributed according to differentiated income levels, 
according to a scheme structured around the holders and recipients of 
rights administered by census, considering it physiological and a 
percentage share of absolute poor is tolerable. The labor market is 
highly segmented and includes a narrow band of workers employed in the 
productive islands who float on a deskilled labor market, often made up 
of migrant populations, holders of precarious and occasional, uncertain 
and unguaranteed employment relationships, with wages of subsistence 
bordering on poverty. These workers support the economic model with 
their income, even if marginal, and with the payment of social 
contributions, but they live in a precarious situation and can be 
expelled at any time. Small and medium-sized producers, but also the 
owners of multinational settlements, prefer to co-determine and submit 
to the local forces that manage a specific territory to escape the 
economic burdens incurred by the State and therefore fuel processes of 
political and administrative decentralization and delocalization .

The project enters into crisis

Just when the project was about to start and the first decisions had 
been adopted by the European Parliament regarding green policy, the 
crisis, piloted and desired, of the Ukrainian war exploded. This 
strategic choice is seen by Europe's international competitors as a way 
to escape competition, which constitutes a danger for all economies 
based on exports and trade, since the European continent represents the 
richest and largest market in the world but , unlike the US one, is 
contestable. Therefore, for the many competitors of the European 
Community, it is necessary to put the continent's economy into crisis, 
hitting it where it is most vulnerable: the availability of low-cost 
energy, guaranteed by energy supply relationships with Russia. This 
partnership must be broken, fueling conflict where conditions are more 
favourable: hence the support for Ukrainian claims and the inclusion of 
the unresolved crisis in relations between Ukraine and Russia in the 
international comparison, taking advantage of the fact that the conflict 
has been at a standstill since 2014.
The interruption of energy supplies is not the only consequence of the 
Ukrainian war, because it adds to it the need to redirect the budget of 
the European Union and of the countries that are part of it towards the 
war economy, necessarily having to subtract resources to other expenses, 
not least those necessary to finance the process of green transformation 
of the economy. From the above reasons comes an uncontrolled growth in 
the cost of energy, with the result that this item has an enormous 
impact on the cost of production of goods and it is the entire community 
budget that must be redirected to provide for the supply of armaments 
and ammunition to Ukraine , to support the expenses of a failed and 
corrupt state, to welcome the millions of refugees who leave the country 
under the threat of bombs and war. Apparently nothing changes and the 
European Union proceeds with the launch of the green policy for which, 
however, the resources no longer exist.

Involvement in the Ukrainian war

Today, the issues come home to roost and the entire information system 
is no longer able to lie and is forced to admit that we were telling the 
truth when we stated that there is a direct connection between the war 
in Ukraine and the sacrifices it entails on the country's budget. 
European Union. The demonstrations of farmers who in all European 
countries are rebelling against the community agricultural policy (CAP) 
are motivated by the fact that they are called upon to pay the costs of 
the war because their sector's resources are being taken away.
In fact, in order to find the economic resources necessary to finance 
the war in Ukraine, fought in the name of safeguarding the principles of 
the Union, which have also been violated several times in the same 
countries that are part of it, everything is done: the ongoing conflict 
is presented like the defense of a democratic country, which is not 
democratic, but is an oligarchy, in all similar to the one Ukraine is 
fighting, namely the Putin regime. The contenders in this war know well 
that the only real victims of the conflict are the Ukrainian and Russian 
peoples, called to bleed to death on the battlefields and face the 
devastating consequences of a fratricidal conflict and that the defense 
of democratic institutions is a mirror for the larks. We are beginning 
to see this clearly now that the conflict seems to have achieved the 
objectives that its true supporters and sponsors were pursuing, namely 
that of undermining the economic and development choices of the Union. 
In fact, what is happening is that the need to find resources, faced 
with the less likely US financing which constituted a significant part 
of the investment necessary for the war, becomes necessary to find 
resources from other budget items, including the EU's agricultural 
budget. , forgetting that the CAP was the basis of the cohesion and 
success of community policy.

Public opinion is told that farmers are taking to the streets with their 
tractors to denounce budget restrictions, the decrease in funding at 
community and state level, the increase in taxation, and their protests 
point to the effects of policies environmentalists and the reduction of 
arable land, but in reality the situation is even more complex given the 
wicked choice to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine by creating 
"solidarity corridors" for its agricultural products to deal with the 
blockade of trade on the Black Sea , allowed Ukrainian oligarchs, owners 
of agricultural land and multinationals, to sell their goods on the 
European internal market, competing with EU producers and leaving part 
of their crops unsold.
It was unfair competition because not only did the Ukrainian traders 
earn by having their goods paid for in euros, which was a valuable 
currency for them, but they sold products on the market, avoiding the 
very strict community controls on the methods of production of 
foodstuffs, applied to the goods of European countries, with the result 
that the delicate system of the community agricultural economy has 
entered into crisis, with profound damage to the budgets of farmers in 
all European countries. Hence the protests and the request to stop these 
speculative favorable treatments towards Ukrainians, which have been 
slowed down by a growing number of governments through the adoption of 
protectionist measures.
Added to all this was the repeal of a series of support measures 
provided for by the CAP which rebalanced farmers' production costs, as 
well as restrictions on the quotas of arable land, the imposition of 
mandatory four-year rotations, which reduced production capacities of 
companies, the abolition of duties with Mercosur was approved which 
created an unsustainable economic situation in the production price - 
profit ratio, placing the cost of the green reconversion of the economy 
and the growing costs of the war on the shoulders of farmers.
It is this set of reasons that has caused the agricultural policy crisis 
involving Europe and it will be difficult to resolve unless all EU 
politicians, busy facing the next elections, decide that the cost of 
supporting the ineffable histrionic partner Ukrainian is too high to 
bear and that it is therefore necessary to review the commitments made 
in the war effort and reach a negotiation as soon as possible.
Besieged by tractors, the European political class seems to have given 
the order "all back!" and is withdrawing many of the decisions adopted, 
but by now the problems of agricultural policy have exploded and concern 
the redefinition of supply chain policies, the cost of large-scale 
distribution, its weight on the price of the product which cancels out 
farmers' profits, the relationship between large and small producers, 
and much more.

The Editorial Staff

See also:

G. L., The peasant anger of the Germans, Ucadi Newsletter, January 2024;
The Editorial Staff, Agricultural Europe and European elections, Ucadi 
Newsletter, November 2023;
G.L., The collapse of the internal front in Ukraine, Ucadi Newsletter, 
December 2023.

https://www.ucadi.org/2024/02/17/politica-agricola-comune-pac-i-nodi-vengono-al-pettine/
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