Eastern Europe’s Rich Soil & Farm Policy Reform

A little help with the above map, in case your Eastern Europe memory is a little hazy. Where countries are:

Hmm - I’m looking for big production numbers to start coming out of Ukraine.

And in case you have forgotten about loess -

Whether they are lime-grey or dark black, loess sediments and the soils derived from them are of special importance for agriculture worldwide because they are some of the most fertile soils there are. In Germany, soil quality is given a rating using an index. The maximum value of 100 was attributed to the loess soil at Eickendorf in the Magdeburger Börde plains.

Loess sediments and their soils cover around one-tenth of the earth. In Europe, loess is a powdery product of glaciations during the Ice Age. During those cold periods, this very fine, light material was swept from bare regions on the edges of the glaciers and deposited in regions with denser vegetation. Loess consists largely of quartz grains and lime. The very fine grains ensure good aeration, water storage and mineral levels. This means that soils derived from loess are very fertile, like the black earth of the Börde plains, but are also particularly susceptible to erosion. It is therefore important to know where exactly these fertile soils so worthy of protection are to be found.

When people say they aren’t making any more farmland, they are right. But what happens when really good land that has been abused or underutilized finally gets farmed well?

Meanwhile, to refresh your knowledge about how money gets distributed under the EU Common Agricultural Policy and more detail about the individual countries, try this helpful site.

I think the EU may point the way on farm program reform. What if they “unilaterally disarm” first?

Additionally, the European Union uses 87 percent of the world’s export subsidies, which severely disadvantages U.S. exports. The U.S. utilizes only 3 percent and the rest of the world uses the remaining 10 percent.

People who routinely use the language of war to describe entitlement payments to a handful of farmers likely have never served in the military with real armaments or have children who now face them. The 2007 Farm Bill is not a war - Iraq is - and evoking the language of death and conflict for political advantage is contemptible and dismissive of the very real threat of very real armaments, IMHO.