[tim333]

I'm not sure going into farming is even good for society at the moment. My dad was a farmer for a while and there was mostly a food surplus with the EU paying him to set aside land to control that. You do good for society by providing things it's short off.

[spookie]

You should take a look at the price of food after Russia launched their full scale invasion in Ukraine. A significant increase, 15% at its peak and lowering thereafter to about 5%. Still, it is above pandemic levels.

You rise food prices and there's a domino effect on the economy, everything else also increases in price.

It is important the EU is able to produce its own food at acceptable prices.

[pas]

if food security is important then the EU should pay for cost-effectiveness, economic sustainability, ecological resilience, storage capacity, and so on.

AFAIK right now it pays the same for a huge unproductive monoculture of non-edible corn (ie. for bioethanol) as it pays for wheat. (though there's finally talk about some changes to CAP, mostly to stop paying already rich big farms.)

food prices are pretty volatile anyway, and as you see even a war only moved them 15% whereas in Hungary inflation was more than 20%.

[spookie]

Hungary is facing a stagnant economy, with poorly targetted subsidies and overall high corruption. Inflation was already high since 2019 compared to other OECD countries with similar GDP per capita (checked Estonia, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia). They have also continued to engage with Russia economically despite sanctions (even outside the energy sector) leading to sometimes having exemptions or attempting to use that as leverage against EU policies. All of this has further destabilized their economy, given neighbours will hesitate in trade.

Hungary is the worst example you could pick from the EU.