Policy Exchange argues leaving EU’s Common Agricultural Policy

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the EU’s largest and oldest policy, absorbing nearly 40 per cent of its budget. And, as even the most zealous Europhiles would admit, it is one of its most disastrous. Over the last 40 years, CAP has focused on the interests of producers, raising food prices for consumers, distorting markets, and preventing the UK from doing advantageous trade deals. While we are in the EU, 87 per cent of UK farming income comes from subsidies – a perverse and unsustainable state of affairs, which has significantly reduced the productivity of Britain’s farmers. Leaving the EU allows us to think again about agricultural policy from first principles, and to ask what it is that government and the taxpayer should fund farmers to do. Click here to read more

Read more: Michael Gove tells farmers they must earn their subsidies after Brexit