Although almost universally painted as an unmitigated evil, it would be interesting to know how much capacity for food production would have been lost in Europe without the EU subsidies.

People too easily forget how important food security is for nations and how the experience of food shortages during WWII meant many European governments have chosen to encourage local food production, even if nominally inefficient.

Perhaps this is an example where government policies have meant increased food capacity rather than the other way round.

Jennifer: "an informative and thoughtful article".

And here am I thinking the opposite. For example I wholeheartedly agree that "underutilised capacity of ... Africa" should be put to good use. This issue has been sticking out like a sore thumb for as long as I can remember, killing many millions of Africans. In fact they have been living dieing in a Malthusian fashion since before the start of recorded history. We should probably get the Israelis and Arabs living in harmony first though, as given the short time that problem has been around we have more chance of success. Ditto for all the other international political problems he lists.

And yes, the drought was unlucky. Over the millennia people living near the capacity of the land in good times have died during the droughts. If their luck had held they would of been OK.

And then he says "re-examination of Malthus’s writings ...". Here I take it he means by reading between the lines, because on the lines Malthus message is rather simple: if, at a given technological level, the capacity of the land is X humans and you exceed X, the imbalance will be solved by the 4 horseman and the apocalypse.

We haven't actually hit X for the last two centuries because we keep improving our technology. Unfortunately the huge leaps that produced green revolution petered out some time ago, and as michael_in_adelaide pointed out some of the resources those leaps depended on are beginning to run low. Mick Keogh even hints that he sort-of accepts this when he says "A key factor in achieving future increases in global food output will be renewed public investment in agricultural research". From what I can see this is just wishful thinking. The only technology that has any hope of delivering the increases we need is GM, but to date it hasn't come close.

As for AGW policy effecting agriculture: it doesn't currently, so "fixing it" can not lead to higher feed production then we have now. If it becomes an issue fix it then, for now its just a distraction.

It's very rare that we see articles on OLO actually criticising government interference in markets as being the cause of a problem, rather than the solution. I finally figured out why.

So-called crises are constantly propping up among the politically minded. Something always needs fixing by government. Those that don't automatically see government as the solution, such as the author, also tend to be rather optomistic about the markets ability to manage them. They also tend to be more aware that any apparent crisis or downturn is generally a mere blip in an ever improving overall pricture.

Because of this, reluctance by them to get into such debates (common on OLO) is understandable. But I am glad some writers are willing to defend "[producers] and consumers ... right to produce or consume" as they choose.