• TraschcanOfIdeology [they/them, comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    That's rich coming from the economic union that spends 40% of its budget on agricultural subsidies, which they then use to flood global south countries that sign FTAs with the EU with cheap food, ruining the livelihood of peasants and smallholder farmers.

    • RyanGosling [none/use name]
      ·
      1 year ago

      When we do it, it’s simply western ingenuity and entrepreneurship. When they do it, it’s sinister.

    • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      That's not why they do it the livelihoods of peasants in the global south are collateral damage. The intent is cheap food in Europe.

      • YouKnowIt [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Do they have export tariffs on food then? I'm genuinely asking, I can only find agriculture related import tariffs after a few minutes of searching. The EU's only got 1/5 the export of agricultural products of the US by dollar amount, but that's still a shitload with the comparative population density

        • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          by no means are they in any way concerned about ruining the livelihood of global south peasants. They subsidise agriculture for the reason of cheap food and supporting the rural European economy and then to deal with surplus dump unsold food on the market. Like I said they know what they are doing to the global south's agricultural economy but it isn't the object of the exercise

          it's also not a practice unique to the EU China does the same thing with steel. A country that wished to protect itself from this would more reasonably put import tariffs on EU food and use this money to subsidise it's own agriculture than expect the EU to stop a successful program to spread money to rural areas and provide cheap food