restructure our industry

[grassfarmer]

bombay, Germany is a big country - lots of good farmland but not enough to feed it's population. The global trade that they don't need is for their big multinationals to be shipping goods grown in Germany overseas and replacing them with cheaper imports. Don't kid yourself being a farmer in the EU is a meal ticket - even with their subsidies farms are going broke and the industry is in decline - due largely to cheap overseas imports.
Fair enough we maybe can't grow enough walnuts in Canada but we can grow enough beef - yet we export it cheap in a raw commodity form and buy back value added finished products. That's not too smart.
The old "lets feed the hungry" argument doesn't cut it - there is enough food in the world to alleviate starvation but not the political will to make it happen. I hope you realise that the current move to stop farmers saving their seed for planting in future is ultimately targeted at the 3rd world. Monsanto and the other US corporations are not content to take a technology fee of users in N.America - they ultimately want to extend this to all seed in the world - what a frightening prospect. As I've said before on this forum, once you have the stigma of BSE attached to your country don't expect starving countries in Africa to take your cull cow problem away. The people might jump at the chance of a protein source but their leaders won't allow it.

[bombay_43]

Grassfarmer, remember that Germany also has the stigma of BSE attached to it! Mainly through cattle imported from UK, but there, none the less. As you stated in a previous post, France has higher food prices, but they value agriculture, locally produced foods, and their rural communities are “still” strong. Many of the original EU countries fit this bill. However, they also fit Germanys, in that agriculture is on a steady decline. I believe this is largely due, to recent years additions, of numerous poor countries into the EU. This has forced, what use to be an extremely strong economic group, to deplete it’s resources on lacking countries, now in their Union.

Years ago, Europe found themselves leading the “push” from intensive farming, back to organic. This move is still very much underway, but has a significant cost involved. The EU subsidized farmers in a big way, in order to effect such a change. The European consumers, demanded organic foods. They are adamantly opposed to growth implants, GMO’s and anything else they deem as unnatural.

In many EU countries, beef is considered very high priced. I believe that a potential market for our quality beef exists there, and at profitable prices. However, as long as ear implants are used, forget it! Once again, the old, “the consumer is always right”.

As for being enough food in the world to end starvation, I certainly question that one! I don’t question that large multinationals are striving to control our food supply. Those who control the worlds food supply, will ultimately, hold the power!

Incidently, although the number of young people entering agriculture in Germany is declining, a farmer in Germany is forced to retire at the age of 65. Isn't that when a Canadian farmer is in his prime?

[cowman]

We should all remember that prior to the death of the "CROW" we were a net importer of beef? Our government didn't want to play with the big boys in the international grain wars and let our grain farmers down in a big way.
If they had bit the bullet and supported the grain farmer we wouldn't have all these darned cows?
When they made the announcement the CROW would have to go because it wasn't acceptable under the WTO, that was the day they created this cattle glut? And in the meantime Europe and the USA continued to pile on more and more grain subsidies! The fact is our grainfarmers could compete...but not against foreign treasuries? So without a whimper we conceded the world grain trade to the two big grain bullies...USA and EU!
Of course the Canadian government said they couldn't afford to match subsidies due to our small population. Well maybe they could have if they weren't so busy shovelling the money out the back door to their crooked buddies in Quebec?

[grassfarmer]

Bombay_43, You have some good information on Europe but I would disagree with some of it. Germany may like to claim now they got BSE from UK cattle but they didn't. The only cattle they were importing from the UK were Galloway, Highland and Luings with maybe the odd Welsh Black thrown in - all very low risk BSE cattle (there has never been a case in the luing breed)If they spread BSE to their cattle herd it would be as a result of illegal trading of MBM probably from the French.(The French actually bought several shiploads of MBM from the UK in the weeks after the UK announcement that the MBM was probably contaminated and not safe to use in animal feed) Long before Germany admitted cases of BSE Switzerland reported several cases - all on farms close to the German border where they were buying their feed (powdered calf milk included) from Germany. It bugs me that all we read in Canada is how wonderful the European treatment of BSE was - all the testing they do etc - mostly lies. What actually happened was most countries in continental Europe did was deny they had it for years until they saw the tide of public opinion was turning about BSE in the UK because we took proper precautions to prevent any risk to humans - then the other countries came out and started testing and blamed any cases on UK imports (even if that country had no UK cattle in their herd)
Sorry for that rant, I digress:
Europe's farm decline isn't because of enlargement as the EU has only recently added the new "poorer countries" although I agree in time your analysis of this wealth flow will probably materialise. There has been a long running campaign to run down agriculture in the most heavily populated countries of Europe to be replaced with offshore imports, sadly the UK has been the worst offender at this practice. EU subsidies have never directly supported organic agriculture to my knowledge - in recent times they have all been geared to reducing production and numbers of animals. Organic agriculture has grown in Europe but it is still only a small sector as the majority of consumers won't pay higher prices for inferior looking vegetables etc - rightly or wrongly.
As far as beef prices are concerned prices in the Coop in my local town here are almost identical to the butcher store prices in the small town near where we farmed in Scotland - and the meat is almost identical as well. Many areas of the UK no longer have butcher shops instead all the meat is sold at the supermarkets where prices can be up to 50% higher. Resteraunt beef of course is way dearer particularily in London and the South East of England. I really don't see the UK as being a worthwhile market for Canada - The Italian resteraunt trade might be a different story as it was using Scottish beef prior to BSE and they were paying fantastic prices for our beef.