Not one pound, not even one penny

We've mentioned before that we think that leaving the EU is a great opportunity for us to properly sort out British farming. Wean it from the teat of subsidy that is, go the full New Zealand and offer not one pound, not a penny, as subsidy to farmers.

It would appear that the likely next leader of the NFU has got some of the message:

Farmers will lose most of their direct subsidies after Brexit and must do more to prove that any remaining support delivers public benefits, a farmers’ leader has said.

More than £2 billion a year is paid to farmers based on the amount of land they own but Minette Batters, deputy president of the National Farmers’ Union, accepted that these payments would all but disappear once Britain left the EU. The National Trust and many campaign groups have already called for an end to these “basic payments”. Ms Batters revealed that the farming industry also accepted the need for radical reform of subsidies.

That's nice but not good enough. There should be no subsidies whatsoever. Needless to say The Times doesn't agree:

Subsidies should be scrapped altogether when Britain leaves the EU, this argument runs, since they only prop up failing businesses. That would be a mistake. Many farms, particularly hill farms and small farms in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, would no longer be viable. Large rural areas would be overtaken by brambles, thistles, nettles and scrub. Productive potential would be lost and landscapes sullied. Emissions would rise as Britain sent lorries and aircraft to fetch food from abroad. Prices in the supermarket would shoot up too. That hits the poorest hardest, as more of their income goes on food.

This is to miss the point that subsidies come from somewhere. Taxpayers cannot be made worse off through rising food prices if they also don't have to pay the subsidies at the same time. However, it's here that they are truly in error:

 The CAP’s main condition is on land ownership: the bigger the farm, the bigger the subsidy. Ms Batters reckons that this is unlikely to go on after Brexit. Neither should it. Bigger farms are normally those least in need of the subsidy to survive. Supporting smaller farms also avoids mass consolidation which narrows the gene pool and renders crops less resilient against disease.

The focus should be on providing farms of all sizes with the capital to invest in more productive equipment and training to use it.

Sigh. Subsidy to the simple ownership of land just increases the capital value of that land as David Ricardo pointed out that it would. not having such subsidies would therefore lower the price of farmland. And a lower cost of farmland reduces the amount of capital needed to be a farmer - thus neatly providing farmers with more capital simply by abolishing the subsidies.

Our very demand, the removal of all subsidy, would produce the very thing The Times desires, more capital for farmers.