EU set aside zero subsidy policy produces a rapid response by English farmers.

Set-aside was first introduced in 1988 as part of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) as a simple way (the MacSharry reforms) of dealing with over-production and controlling the supply (and price) of cereals by requiring farmers to leave a proportion of their land out of production - for which they would still receive a subsidy. In the UK a target of a reduction of 10% of agricultural land was to be taken out of production and loud were the cries from tax-payers about farmers being paid for doing nothing - at the rate of 406 euros per hectare last year.

In November the European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Danish sprightly 65 year old Mariann Fischer Boel, slammed this policy into reverse gear and announced zero set-aside rate for the 2007-08 cropping season (i.e so far for one year only) . She forecast that this would enable the EU farmers to provide a further 17 million tons of grain for hungry world markets, currently paying record prices for food grains for humans and their animals.

At the same time caps have been introduced on the size of subsidies, - for example the Queen's estates, which received £465,000 in CAP subsidy in 2005, will drop by £140,000 under the new rules. Quelle horreur !!

She also proposes proposes to increase the amount of land a farmer has to own before qualifying for EU aid, from the current 0.3 hectares, to ensure that only genuine farmers receive subsidies.This far sighted lady , who has 3 farms in Denmark also wants to abolish milk quotas by 2015 and eventually all farm subsidies. ****

What glamorous Mrs Fischer Boel (pic) did overlook however is that most of that set-aside land is already being used, (for a different EU program - the production of bio-fuels, not food) quite legally, to grow non-food crops, such as rape and even wheat, most of it for biofuels as well as willow coppice . The EU wearing it's eco-hat is so keen on planet-saving biofuels that it has decided that by 2020 they must supply 10 per cent of our transport fuel, replacing petrol and diesel.

Despite this total and complete contradiction of policies, it also meant that precious environmental benefits would shrink along with the area of fieldside strips, and fallow land.

The increasingly inept and confused Hilary Benn has revealed today in a remarkably swift report produced by DeFRA that the amount of farm land left uncropped in England is likely to fall by more than 50% in 2008.

CHANGE IN THE AREA AND DISTRIBUTION OF SET-ASIDE IN ENGLAND: JANUARY 2008 UPDATE Defra Agricultural Change and Environment Observatory January 2008

Areas in area in margins and corners of fields (which can be only 10 metres wide) is only expected to reduce by 13% but
non-rotational area - out of production > 1 year will fall by 35% and rotational area - land left out of production for one year only - will fall by 85%.

Which shows that Johnny Farmer is extremely sensitive to changes in CAP subsidies and can react with remarkable speed when his income is threatened.

**** Mrs Boel also has her eyes on the 500 Euros spent (wasted) by the EU every year distilling ethanol from surplus wine stocks (usually that stuff indistinguishable from battery acid from Greece) and wants to institute a vine pulling program ( removing 13% of EU vineyards at a one off cost of 2.4bn euros) to reduce wine production and to spend the money saved, on marketing and promoting the decent EU wines to compete with New World and South American wines.

Wine accounts for 5.4% of EU agricultural output and employs about 1.5m (mainly seasonal) people. Average production over the past five years was about 178hl, worth about 16bn euros.

EU wine imports have grown 10% a year exceeding growth in exports In 2005, exports of 13m hectolitres only narrowly exceeded imports (12m hl).

Wine produced but not sold has been steadily growing. It could reach 15% of the EU's total output by 2010/11. The EU wine lake currently exceeds one year's production.

**** Just remember that due to huge incompetence under Ma Beckett the United Kingdom government has been fined as much as £305 million for its failings in implementing the new Single Payment Scheme of the Common Agricultural Policy = 20 % of the £1.5 billion paid out under the Single Farm Payment Scheme in the EU budget year 2004-05.

Not that you would disentangle this easily from the Parliamentary Statement ... "In a written statement to Parliament, junior Defra Minister Barry Gardiner explained there would be "a claim on the Reserve of £305,000,000 of non-cash programme resources to cover provision for disallowance arising from Common Agricultural Policy schemes, most notably the Single Payment Scheme." Full and nasty details in National Audit Office report.

Offshoring warrantless surveillance - more bollocks from the conspiracy freaks

Dag Wilhelmsen is General Manager of the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency and is on a 4 day visit to Bulgaria to meet the Minister of Defence Vesselin Bliznakov and the State Commission on Information Security. Dag says of the NC3A "we provide, as a host nation as it's called, the capability to acquire a lot of NATO equipment and systems such as satellite communications, automated information systems, communication networks and deployable capabilities for NATO's operations."

In the light of the entry of Bulgaria to the EU in January announced last week it is important there is clarity of understanding between all NATO members.

His visit coincides with a curious e-mail Lord Patel has received regarding previous posts on US warrantless surveillance of domestic telephony / IP traffic in the US. The unkown but knowledgeable informant claims that the US outsource surveillance just as they do, imprisonment, torture and interrogation.

Data split off AT & T and other networks is ( the writer claims) squirted anywhere in the world for further analysis and this is undertaken by friendly folks who accept US military establishments, suitably equipped who take on staff on short term, highly deniable contracts who can be found strolling the streets on 4 week breaks on an island to the Eastern end of the Mediterranean well known for it's highly visible and well known mountain top communications gear.

They then disappear for 6 week stints - it is claimed - to the home of Ovid and a little further south and north of Greece .. where they might this week bump into Dag Wilhelmsen.

The writer was impelled to write (they say) after reading a post about CACI (suppliers of torturers to Abu Graigh and beyond) and their software skills in providing EU telcos to meet the forthcoming Data Directive.

So. get this crazy idea, data is split off domestic US telcos (well we know that), squirted to (say) Bulgaria and Romania, (i.e outside US legal jurisdiction) to be worked over by staff familiar with analytical software (but anonymised) used to handling massive data volumes (with security clearances of the highest order) , supplied by firms such as CACI (and many others ?) which might be tied in with NATO Command and Control agencies ? Preposterous nonsense, curiously this lunatic didn't involve a pitch for Viagra. Who on Earth would believe such crap ?

That's the trouble with the Internet, this sort of bollocks can circulate without the slightest shred of evidence. That Dag Wilhelmsen, the General Manager of the NATO Consultation, Command and Control Agency was evidently wasting his precious time in Bulgaria meeting the Minister of Defence Vesselin Bliznako. Let's trust he didn't waste any time (and NATO taxpayers money) going to the US installation at the Ravnets base outside the port / airport of Burgas on the Black Sea.

The EU's dependence on imported energy grows

Statistics on energy for the EU25 have been published by Eurostat today.

Briefly the EU in 2005 consumed 1, 637 million tonnes of oil equivalent ( TOE see footnote) much the same as 2004.

EU25 production of all sources of energy fell by 4.2% in 2005, and net imports rose by 4.5%. Consequently the EU25 depends on imports for 56% of its energy needs, up from 54% in 2004.

If a longer time frame is considered between 1995 and 2004 energy consumption in the EU25 rose by 11%, production fell by 2%, and net imports rose by 29%.

Energy consumption per capita in the EU25 in 2005 was equivalent to 3.6 TOE in 2005, US = 7.8 TOE/capita and Japan 4.1 TOE/capita.


All EU25 indigenous energy sources types fell in 2005,

1. Crude oil declined 9.0% over 2004
2, Natural gas by 5.8%
3. Coal by 5.7%
4. Nuclear energy by 1.3%.

The UK accounted for 70% of the crude oil produced in the EU25 (a decline of 11% on previous year), followed by Denmark 15% of production which declined by 4%.

The UK was also the EU25's largest gas producer = 44% of production declining by 7.7% over 2004, the next was Holland with 32% of production which declined by 6%.

Poland, was EU25's largest coal producer with 57% of the coal mined and production declined by 2.1%. In Germany (19% of the EU25 total) and the United Kingdom (13%), the 2nd and 3rd largest coal producers, production decreased by 3.9% and 17.9% respectively.

France, which produced 46% of all EU25 electricity from nuclear sources and production increased by 0.9%, the 2nd largest supplier, Germany (16% of market) production (through plant closures) fell by 3.0%.

Oil imports (60% of energy imports) rose 3% in 2005 and gas (25%) 9.2%. (see pic of LNG tanker - soon to be seen in Milford Haven ?)

Member States dependence on imports varies from Cyprus, totally dependent, Portugal 99.4% to Denmark, which produces more energy than it needs, is a net exporter of energy. The UK is currently 13% dependent and is planned to be 80% dependent by 2020.

A tonne of oil equivalent (toe) is a standard unit defined as ....

A TOE, Tonne of oil equivalent , is One tonne of oil with a net calorific value of 41.868 Gigajoules. A convenient although not wholy accurate common measure so one Giga Joule of nuclear power = 0.024 tonnes of oil, and one tonne of high grade coal = the same amount of energy as 0.7 tonnes of oil.

For more on energy security concerns go here