Word: caps
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...Despite the attacks on free trade, the policy that seemed at greatest risk was a profoundly protectionist one: the E.U.'s Common Agricultural Policy, which has sustained the European farming industry through subsidies and price supports for four decades. The cap was devised at a time when more than a quarter of Europe's workforce was employed in farming. Now that figure is below 6%, yet agriculture still consumes half the E.U. budget...
...What most irks environmentalists and small farmers alike is that the cap, by rewarding output over husbandry, has led to the "intensification" of farming by large agribusiness interests, which in turn has bankrupted small farmers and eroded food safety. In France, 80% of E.U. subsidies go to just 20% of farms. Overall, figures Ewa Rabinowicz of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, "40% of common resources are spent on 1% to 2% of the working population...
...recent rash of food-safety scares-and the huge cost of "emergency measures" to cope with them-has prompted calls for a greener and more rational cap. Renate Kunast, Germany's new Agriculture Minister, advocates dropping price supports and revamping subsidies to encourage small-scale organic farming, which emphasizes eco-friendly land stewardship, animal welfare and use of natural produce. Other politicians, ranging from Blair to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, have called for a similar reorientation of agriculture policies...
...such reforms face obstacles. Last week the French government defied the common policy by offering $194 million in additional relief to its bse-ravaged farmers. Still, France is reluctant to go along with major changes to the cap, in part because under the current system its farmers receive more cap money than any other E.U. country. And organic farming doesn't necessarily make disease control any easier: the 1967 foot-and-mouth outbreak occurred at a time when small farms predominated in British agriculture. Farmers then kept pigs outside, facilitating the airborne spread of the virus. And for consumers, there...
Next to the 1000-page IPCC assessment, the last few weeks were also filled with media reports of anecdotal evidence--extreme weather events that are projected to become more frequent as overall temperatures rise. Most notably, Mt. Kilimanjaro's ice cap, which has towered for millennia over Kenya and Tanzania's plains, is now melting and is expected to disappear within 15 years. Kilimanjaro is not alone in losing its snows--glaciers from the Alps to the Andes will disappear at a frightening rate--but the Kilimanjaro ice cap has been a valuable source of water for the surrounding areas...