EU Green Cuts to Farm Inputs To Leave 185 Million Food Insecure, Drop Farm Income, and Hike Prices

Nov. 21, 2020 (EIRNS)—A U.S. Department of Agriculture study of the impact of the European Union’s green plan for agriculture, called “Farm to Fork,” shows the predictable, devastating harm that will come from implementing the green restrictions on farming, such as cuts in inputs, dictated in the name of saving the planet. The USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) report is titled, “Economic and Food Security Impacts of Agricultural Input Reduction under the European Union Green Deal’s Farm to Fork and Biodiversity Strategies” (Economic Brief No. 30, November 2020).

The ERS ran simulations of the results from implementation of EU-targeted restrictions on “the use of land, fertilizers, antimicrobials, and pesticides.” (They did not include animal welfare nor “organic” regulation factors, for lack of satisfactory data.) They cranked these through for three scenarios of what will result by 2030: 1) if EU orders are applied only within the EU; 2) if EU Green orders are spread elsewhere, by means of trade and related measures; 3) if the orders are spread globally. The ERS focussed on what would happen to people in 76 specific nations, for which the ERS has relatively precise information.

ERS researchers recognized that the Green advocates say that new “alternative” technologies can make up for any gaps in production, but the ERS set aside this questionable assertion as too vacuous.

Here is the summary from the ERS report’s Abstract: “Under all these scenarios, we found that the proposed input reductions affect EU farmers by reducing their agricultural production by 7 to 12%.... Moreover, we found that adoption of these strategies would have impacts that stretch beyond the EU, driving up worldwide food prices by 9% (EU only adoption) to 89% (global adoption), negatively affecting consumer budgets, and ultimately reducing worldwide societal welfare by $96 billion to $1.1 trillion, depending on how widely other countries adopt the strategies.

“We estimate that the higher food prices under these scenarios would increase the number of food-insecure people in the world’s most vulnerable regions by 22 million (EU only adoption) to 185 million (global adoption).”