This will, of curse, come as a great shock to readers here - government turns out to be not very good at performing a task. Here the issue is one of giving away free money - they’re really just not very good at this:

Everywhere you look, the richness and abundance of European nature is under threat. Since the 1970s and 80s, even while many environmental indicators in Europe have improved – cleaner air in cities, less industrial pollution, less sewage in waterways (outside the UK) – the story of nature is one of steep and stark decline. Wildlife, trees, plants, fish and insects – the picture is bleak.

Nature is declining. Boo!

It was not supposed to be this way. Since the early 2000s, changes to Europe’s farming practices and subsidy regime – the common agricultural policy (CAP) – have been geared explicitly towards protecting the environment, as well as supporting farmers and food production. The CAP represents a third of the EU budget, coming to about €55bn (£46bn) a year and in return for that largesse, farmers are supposed to meet a minimum level of environmental protection. Taking additional measures such as growing more trees or conserving wetlands can net them extra support.

The more government spends on farming to aid nature, with targets, plans and insistences to farm to aid nature, the worse the effect of farming upon nature is.

Oh, and also:

The European Union gave generous farming subsidies to the companies of more than a dozen billionaires between 2018 and 2021, the Guardian can reveal, including companies owned by the former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš and the British businessman Sir James Dyson.

Billionaires were “ultimate beneficiaries” linked to €3.3bn (£2.76bn) of EU farming handouts over the four-year period even as thousands of small farms were closed down, according to the analysis of official but opaque data from EU member states.

The money just goes to the rich anyway.

Note that this is the reformed system. The one before that just paid a flat fee per acre farmed - thus benefitting the richer farmers with the more land. Plus making it more difficult for new entrants, of course because as David Ricardo would have recognised, increasing the rental value of land will push up the capital value of land.

The system before that last reform subsidised ripping out the hedgerows and slathering the countryside in chemicals.

Or, as we can put it, European governments have been doing farming for 80 years now, at minimum, and their farming has got worse as time goes on.

Oh well, three generations on the land and government’s just continued to make it all worse. Time to agree that the experiment has been tried and it doesn’t work. Government’s just not very good at farming so government should stop doing farming.

So, the full New Zealand then. Wholly and entirely abolish the rules, supports, subsidies and interference. Just cancel the entire idea and leave farmers be to work out how best to use their own land. It did, of course, work in New Zealand so it will, of course, work here too.

That £46 billion could also be left to fructify in the pockets of the populace instead of being spent by the European Union on making things worse. H, ha, just our little joke of course. For there’s absolutely no way that Brussels would accept a reduction in their exactions even if they did stop spending it on making farming worse.

But, you know, not making farming worse by not spending €55 billion on making farming worse sounds like a plan. For we’ve tried this and tested it - government just isn’t very good at farming. Therefore government should stop farming.

Tim Worstall