Since production is subsidized, we have seen the environment degraded needlessly to produce grain mountains, butter mountains, wine lakes and milk oceans. We turn away Polish eggs and Caribbean sugar, preferring our subsidized, more expensive produce. Occasionally the EU dumps its surpluses on world markets, under-cutting the efforts of poor countries to sell their own produce at all. There is a word which describes this type of policy, and that word is insanity. Every system of subsidy and support engenders fraud, and the CAP is no exception.
Every new inquiry reveals new levels of fraud.
We now have to bring market forces to bear in agriculture as we did elsewhere. Farmers need time to plan, so we should phase out the subsidies and supports over time.