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The Common Agricultural Policy Is a policy in Europe, in which farmers awarded subsidies to aid agricultural needs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Agricultural_Policy. The Common Agricultural Policy is a system consisting of subsidies and programmes in the European Union. This payment is made to farmers in order to subsidise land and crops. This scheme guarantees that farmers will have a price for their produce. The farmers are provided with direct payments, assuming that they meet the standards of producing safe and healthy food, protect the environment, and also protect wildlife and animal health and welfare. The CAP is also a form of protectionism for the farmers, as it helps to secure European producers from cheaper products that may be imported from outside the EU. The single farm payment was introduced in June 2003 and prior to this system, the CAP was direct subsidies on agricultural produce, however this raised a lot of issues and therefore in June 2003 farmers were paid with a lump sum payment on a per hectare basis.

Debates
The debates on the CAP are that it results in high prices, as in order to increase income that the farmers receive; the consumers therefore have to pay prices that are much higher. This results in allocative inefficiency and widens the inequality gap in the country, as; individuals who have lower incomes will have to spend a larger percentage of their income on food. The CAP also comes with incentives which then encourages farmers to increase their output and in order to do this at a faster rate, they result in using chemicals such as pesticides and artificial fertilisers in order to speed the process. The CAP not only affects and causes issues in France, but also is a global matter and other countries suffer consequently. The problem that arises in other poorer countries is that the farmers are left with lower incomes. This is a result of the encouragement of over producing; therefore the CAP enforced the EU to buy surplus produce, which was then sold very cheaply to developing countries. This procedure not only damages the economies of these countries but also makes the producers worse off. This reduces welfare in the developing world making the CAP a global concern.

Arguments
Arguments against of the level of support that the farmers receive is that it results in French food becoming unsafe. For example, American diplomats such as Philip H Gordon, as well as other MEP's. This goes against the criterion that needs to be met when a farmer is provided with a direct payment. Due to the high level of subsidies that is provided to the farmers, they then have more of a motivation to generate more agricultural products, as they will ultimately receive more money. Therefore, the high subsidies given to the farmers has encouraged many of them to use large amounts of chemicals such as pesticides, nitrates and antibiotics. Philip H Gordon is an American diplomat, foreign policy expert and is currently the US assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasian affairs. He was also a senior member at Brookings, which is a public policy organization that carries out high quality independent research. Gordon states that the introduction of the CAP has not only led to ‘bad-tasting food’, but also unsafe food such as mad cow disease due to hormone-treated beef and genetically modified organisms and preservatives. This argument is not only the view of Gordon, but of many French habitants who are becoming increasingly concerned about the level of chemicals that is present in the food.

Credibility
The fact that Gordon is an American diplomat questions the reliability of this argument, as he is not as involved in the EU. Similarly, not all farmers would go to the extent of using chemicals, as this could be a small percentage of farmers participating in this. Gordon provides us with no figures or facts, therefore this could be an assumption and could not be as large and issue claimed. On the other hand, the French Minister of Agriculture, Stéphane Le Foll, is addressing the issue of having unsafe and harmful food. Le Foll is a French politician and a Member of the European parliament for the west of France.