Utopia Talk / Politics / EU demands farmers stop farming

Sam Adams Member	Thu Oct 17 14:11:14 Because the cult of climate crying is more important than eating? Lol@seb http://www.apnews.com/db28ed269ffd4fba935be04d2fc5b27c
Nekran Member	Fri Oct 18 00:38:54 Not about the EU, not about stopping farming. Exactly what I expect from Sammy's accuracy. Also this article is constantly on about Nitrogen... since when is Nitrogen a problem? That's like 80% of the atmosphere or something?
Seb Member	Fri Oct 18 10:11:46 So, its a Dutch measure, not an EU measure, and the measure of to buy out inefficient farms to free efficient ones to expand to deliver the same output but with lower carbon and nitrogen emissions. You'd have to be Sam to oppose this.
Seb Member	Fri Oct 18 10:12:56 Want to bet Sam saw this reported shitily in the Sun or Daily mail, and then posted the AP link instead without reading it?
Rugian Member	Fri Oct 18 10:29:20 Nekran and Seb are correct, this is purely a Dutch initiative that has nothing whatsoever to do with the EU, and furthermore Sam is a complete ret-... "Dutch urged to cut speed limits to reduce nitrogen emissions September 25, 2019 THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — An advisory commission has urged the Dutch government to adopt a broad package of measures including lowering the speed limit on some roads and buying up old, inefficient cattle farms to reduce the country’s nitrogen emissions. The recommendations published Wednesday follow a decision in May by the country’s highest administrative court that said the government’s rules for granting permits for construction and farming activities that emit large amounts of nitrogen breached European Union law. Johan Remkes, who led the advisory commission, says the Dutch government has to make some tough choices to reduce emissions. http://www.apnews.com/c4865d774bf745fe8d74b236917cff17 ...oh.
Seb Member	Fri Oct 18 11:00:55 Rugian: Does EU law require that Holland stop inefficient farming? No. Just that they cut nitrogen emissions. They could do so by, e.g. regulating more strongly on industry, or diesel engines.
Seb Member	Fri Oct 18 11:03:09 Cutting nitrogen emissions is fine. In a single market that needs to be coordinated or States can seek competitive advantage. Hence it is done at the EU level. How they go about doing that is up to them. It is Holland that is choosing to look at the agricultural sector, and far from banning farming or whatever, it's proposing to buy out small inefficient farms. A sensible approach.
jergul large member	Fri Oct 18 12:15:10 Nitrogen emissions means NOX, not N2
Seb Member	Fri Oct 18 12:16:28 Jergul: Obviously.
Seb Member	Fri Oct 18 12:16:56 Oh, just saw the last line of nekrans post !
jergul large member	Fri Oct 18 13:10:24 Seb I am unsure that larger units mean greener agriculture. For example, the carbon footprint of predominantly grass-fed milking cow (slaughtered for meat later) is far, far lower per unit of output than corn fed beef cattle. There are some interesting studies that indicate grazing actually does store a significant about of CO2 in the upper 1.5 meters of topsoil (up to and including methane eating bacteria that thrive on grazing animals breathing on them). I would put the subsidies into electrification myself. Which is not yet endlessly scaleable (larger farming machinery has yet to have an electric counterpart).
Nimatzo iChihuaha	Fri Oct 18 14:21:32 Inefficiency are bad and should always be worked out, but something to keep in mind is: 9% of the worlds carbon emissions comes agriculture half of that comes from meat Matthew 23:24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
jergul large member	Fri Oct 18 15:10:44 Nimi Reducing carbon footprint is an inefficiency. Humane animal and worker treatment is an inefficiency. Pushing through a 3 million Euro project is an inefficiency (assuming it was marginally efficient at 1 million euro). hell, both taxes and subsidies are inefficencies.
Seb Member	Fri Oct 18 17:40:15 Jergul: Evidently the Dutch think so. A buyout scheme almost certainly means they have an evidence base. The article seems focused on nox, so it will really be about fertilizer use and diesel.
Sam Adams Member	Fri Oct 18 18:14:50 So a client state of the eu does something in order to meet a eu demand and nekran and seb in their infinite retardation claim it is "not eu". Its like the miami dolphins of thinking.
Seb Member	Sat Oct 19 02:51:32 Member state. Holland supported the regulations on the first place. Sam is weird: "I want more pollution! Pollution is good! N-O-X, U-S-A". I mean I bet he was against the damned feds forcing States to reduce sulphur emissions. "Fucking socialist dictator Regan, forcing us to get rid of acid rain." Anyway, to get back to the substantive, no, the fact the EU agreed NOX limits doesn't mean you can say that the EU is demanding farmers stop farming. Largely because the EU isn't, and even what the dutch are doing can't be described as stopping farmers farming.
jergul large member	Sat Oct 19 06:01:21 Seb I am sure they do. But remember that larger units have disproportionate impact on policies (and recieve the lion's share of all subsidies). My view is that the paradigm has to change. A semi-substinance teacher-farmer (or pensioner-farmer) with the right machinery, production goals, and outlook has data to support her too.
Sam Adams Member	Mon Oct 21 10:17:28 Seb is wierd: "i want less food and more nanny state!"
Seb Member	Mon Oct 21 11:27:36 Sam: Lol. Ley me introduce you to the common agricultural policy. How about fewer welfare farmers and less surplus subsidised food paid for by taxpayers? Efficient farms producing the same food and less nanny state is the outcome of this policy.
Sam Adams Member	Mon Oct 21 16:47:43 "More government regulation is actually less" -seb
Seb Member	Mon Oct 21 16:53:02 Sam: How is buying out ineffecient farms "regulation"?
jergul large member	Mon Oct 21 17:34:17 Sammy Its not more regulation, its adding a new trigger to something similar to eminent domain. My problem with it is based on that. In its rawest form - public money spent to buy out small-holders, then giving the land to agro-industrial landholders. In effect, its just another agricultural subsidy.
Sam Adams Member	Mon Oct 21 18:25:42 "How is buying out ineffecient farms" How about you let the farmers and the free market decide what is or is not efficient, you filthy communist cockgoblin.
jergul large member	Mon Oct 21 18:36:55 Sammy Yah, how about you do that? "The U.S. government presently pays about $25 billion in cash annually to farmers and owners of farmland"
CrownRoyal Member	Mon Oct 21 19:33:04 "At $28 billion so far, the farm rescue is more than twice as expensive as the 2009 bailout of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, which cost taxpayers $12 billion. And farmers expect the money to keep flowing: In an August survey by Purdue University and the CME Group, 58% said they anticipate another round of trade aid next year." http://www...llion-bailout-isn-t-a-solution
CrownRoyal Member	Mon Oct 21 19:33:30 free market ftw
Forwyn Member	Mon Oct 21 19:40:18 "Its not more regulation, its adding a new trigger to something similar to eminent domain." rofl
jergul large member	Mon Oct 21 19:48:35 Forwyn Dont be a moron, mkay? The advisory report actually wants government to play nice. Not nice would simply be removing all subsidy for farms of a certain type, bankrupt them, then take the land for lack of payment on property taxes. Then giving the land away to larger agro-industrial units. Along with an increased subsidy.
Forwyn Member	Mon Oct 21 20:13:14 "Not meeting our efficiency standards will result in you being bought out" "This isn't regulartion" "Dont be a moron" rofl
jergul large member	Mon Oct 21 20:42:41 You are still being a moron, bro The Netherlands has legal obligations and can invoke eminent domain. This is not *more* regulations. Perhaps save your rofls for next time eminent domain is used to get a new sports arena or hotel complex over where you live. At least emission control to meet international commitments is a good reason. Please also note that it just is a recomendation from an advisory comission. It is not something the government has done. The problems with this are as I have noted previously.
jergul large member	Mon Oct 21 20:47:14 What is incidentally your position on eminent domain being used to construct pipelines through farmland?
Forwyn Member	Mon Oct 21 21:30:13 "emission control" is regulation by definition. If your backboard is "more", fine. If your backboard is, "muh US can eminent domain for private enterprise, rofl", Kelo v. New London is a fucking sham and I'm A-okay with publicly executing the justices from that majority
jergul large member	Tue Oct 22 00:39:11 Forwyn Emission control is a regulation already in place. The advisory board is citing it as the basis its recomendations. So is eminent domain. The only change is a new justification for something there likely is considerable pressure to do anyway (support the large agro-industrial units at the expense of smaller farms).
Seb Member	Tue Oct 22 03:49:56 Sam Adams: So you want to end the common agricultural policy? I do too. But that means less food, and you said you opposed my desire to see less farmers. You wanted more farmers. You supported excess pollution and unnecessary agricultural production from subsidised activity. I'm glad you agree. Eve CAP and tax nitrogen pollution heavily.
Seb Member	Tue Oct 22 03:52:09 Forwyn: Nitrogen emissions imposes costs on society. A true laissez-faire free market would simply give unlimited liability to the farmers for consequential damages to those affected by nitrogen pollution. Which do you think gives a more efficient market?
Forwyn Member	Tue Oct 22 07:52:30 jergul: So, "more". That's fine. Seb: Not interested in this Eurocuck yawnfest. Just laughing at this retardation: "How is buying out ineffecient farms "regulation"?" If you truly believe emissions lead to measurable costs in the span of a single lifetime, regulate away, just have the decency to be honest about it.
jergul large member	Tue Oct 22 08:35:10 Forwyn Ty. NOX are actually measurably dangerous.
Seb Member	Tue Oct 22 09:08:39 Forwyn: Sam isnt complaining about the EU reg on nitrogen emissions. He's complaining about the policy that the Netherlands is applying in the agricultural sector. This is neither an EU issue, nor a particularly statist measure. If Sam is basically arguing that the free market requires that commands be free to release NOx without bound, that's a very odd definition.
jergul large member	Tue Oct 22 09:31:29 Seb Its not even a policy. Its a recommendation from an advisory board.
Seb Member	Tue Oct 22 09:41:48 Yes, proposed policy.
jergul large member	Tue Oct 22 10:14:00 Or a brainstorm idea that is not being applied to the agricultural sector?
Seb Member	Tue Oct 22 10:18:34 It's someone's proposed policy. Not agreed Govt policy. Presumably advisory board is some kind of quango not a random think tank.
jergul large member	Tue Oct 22 11:19:16 A policy proposal you mean? http://www...p-internationaal-klimaatbeleid page 6/9 I can read dutch it seems, but it makes my ears bleed. A policy proposal is pre hearings. So it is very early in any policy development process. Brainstorm is not far off the mark.
Seb Member	Tue Oct 22 14:11:05 I'm not using the term technically. We would call that green paper/white paper etc.
Seb Member	Tue Oct 22 14:12:30 Though of course often think tanks call their barely thought through noodlings white papers too, so... Also I'm not sure the UK govt has had the discipline to do proper green paper, consultation, white paper process for a while. Can't think why. Almost like somethings distracting everybody from productive work.
jergul large member	Tue Oct 22 16:08:58 Seb hehe, ty for the terminology. I was stuck in the Germanic (Utredning, høringsinnspill, lovforslag). I actually just reviewed the process. The Parliament has extremely detailed and transparent information for public viewing...though not translated to English. heh, it gives me faith in the system.
Sam Adams Member	Tue Oct 22 18:43:05 "The U.S. government presently pays about $25 billion in cash annually to farmers and owners of farmland" Sure its not great, but at least our government fucks with the market in the direction of more food, not less. Its always wise to have a little extra food stashed around, just in case...
Sam Adams Member	Tue Oct 22 18:45:37 Seb in all his retardation wants to increase government regulation on farmers in order to decrease food. Lol thats just dumb.
Dukhat Member	Wed Oct 23 00:33:43 This thread is so stupid on so many levels. Samanatha needs a new black boyfriend to fill her time and her holes.
jergul large member	Wed Oct 23 00:34:11 Sammy Any particular reason you think this proposal to transfer land of inefficient farms to larger, more efficient farms would in fact result in the production of less food. Also, the main carrier for government subsidy is insurance coverage - the farmers get money when they fuck up trying to make food.
Seb Member	Wed Oct 23 03:54:19 Sam: Surplus food drives down prices, creating the ongoing need for agricultural subsidy. It creates the need for low skilled agricultural jobs, which in turn create remote communities entirely dependent on the inefficient agricultural sector, requiring further public investment and making it harder to remove the subsidy. Further, because these are ineficient and poorly paid low skilled jobs, it becomes a magnet for immigration. Indeed you need immigration or the crops don't get picked and *then* you get food shortages. In economic crises this creates a strong procyclical effect: welfare reduced, immigrants go elsewhere, food spoils in the field, price of living goes up across the country. The presence of agricultural subsidies inhibits free trade deals - is stalled the Doha round for 20 years. The surplus food then ends up being dumped abroad at near zero cost, where it can drive famine by putting the cost of food below labour price at local rates, driving people into an unstable mix of aid dependence or subsistence farming - which further drives migration. And of course, low efficiency production is polluting. Food subsidies are a terrible idea, particularly when targeted to small holdfarmers. You want more food production and a buffer, then you should promote higher efficiency industrial farming. It can scale better when needed and avoids the above. Which is what is proposed here.
Sam Adams Member	Wed Oct 23 11:50:45 Thats a whole lot of bullshit to try to justify bigger government.
Seb Member	Wed Oct 23 11:56:19 There you have it folks. Sam is Pro big government farming subsidies.
jergul large member	Wed Oct 23 12:20:14 "In 2014 Congress passed another huge farm bill. The bill changed the structure of subsidies, but it did not cut the overall level of benefits. The law ended the direct payment program, the countercyclical program, and a couple of other smaller programs. But it expanded the largest farm subsidy program — crop insurance — and it added two new subsidy programs, the Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC) program and the Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program. When the 2014 farm bill was passed, supporters claimed that it would save money, but the opposite has happened. The ARC and PLC programs have cost almost double what the Congressional Budget Office originally estimated.6 Meanwhile, the cost of crop insurance has soared over the past 15 years. All of these subsidies ensure that farm incomes are much higher than the incomes of most Americans. Farm programs are welfare for the well-to-do, and they induce overproduction, inflate land prices, and harm the environment. They should be repealed, and farmers should support themselves in the marketplace." The government is paying the farmers to fail to grow food. Whatya say, sammy?
earthpig GTFO HOer	Tue Oct 29 01:05:28 The thread & links repeatedly talk about a mandate to "buyout" farms that are on what I will call the "naughty nitro" list, and the discourse seems to be taking that at face value. But we have farmers driving their tractors into town to stop commerce, this indicates to me that these farmers sure as shit don't feel that the "buyout" is a fair market transaction where you have a willing buyer and a willing seller. I smell me some de facto eminent domain. You can't describe that as a "buyout." That's a takeover. Or the farmers are all on meth, or there's some other nuance that needs to be brought to our collective attention.
earthpig GTFO HOer	Tue Oct 29 01:08:18 Please keep in mind that a gov't appraisal is not relevant to the equally important questions of fair market value or voluntary consent. I can point to tens of millions of dollars in real estate transactions, that I personally worked on, where the gov't appraisal was >50% off true market value when the seller is voluntarily consenting to the sale.
smart dude Member	Tue Oct 29 01:17:08 "Oh, just saw the last line of nekrans post !" Oh the irony of being the first person to call someone out for not actually reading what they are commenting on.
Seb Member	Tue Oct 29 01:59:37 Smart Dude: The irony being I'm one of the few people that will actually self correct.
Seb Member	Tue Oct 29 02:03:42 Earthpig: Farms in Europe are all heavily subsidised, so when we talk about fair value, consent etc. the simple fact is the value of the land would be a lot lower if the state weren't already heavily subsidising the activity.
earthpig GTFO HOer	Tue Oct 29 23:02:34 Ah. So when they talk about a "buyout," are you saying what they really mean is just ending the special subsidy? Seems an odd choice of words on the part of the journalist, if so, but I can't say I'd be surprised given how journalism has been for the last decade or so...
Seb Member	Wed Oct 30 02:28:01 No they mean buyout - that's the proposal being made. But one can't really get all that objectivist about the morality of forced purchases (though not clear whether this would be forced or not) given the way the common agricultural policy operates.
jergul large member	Wed Oct 30 04:43:14 Seb The principle of fair value for appropriation is clear and does not offer rebates for sector subsidies. On moral grounds - farmers often lose out for decades on zoning regulations that prohibits them from converting their farmland to residential property. There is an argument for fair value being the best value of use - either assuming subisidy or assuming rezoning and parceling as residential lots.
jergul large member	Wed Oct 30 04:44:27 The State having a limitation on use and because of that limitation, the State can pay less when appropirating land. That is not a good moral place to be.
Seb Member	Wed Oct 30 09:36:19 Jergul: Earthpig is making a broader philosophical point about eminent domain. I don't know about the US but in the UK and I suspect therefore much of the EU (as it speaks to commercial rights) there are strong protections on valuation of land compulsory purchased by the state. Looking at zoning restrictions seems a step too far removed. These are normally determined by local govts so there is a separation point, and applies to all property. It's not like if the owner sold voluntarily they would get a value that it ignored zoning.
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