The Farm Lobby in Germany Had Held the Country Captive Since the Tariff-Wall Days of Otto von Bismarck

Polls suggest that people agree with the statement that farm subsidies are necessary to guarantee a secure food supply; economists, on the other hand, see farm subsidies as wasteful and unnecessary for these ends. He then asks, 'Why are economists not listened to?' One might think that people just have not thought about it, but even when explained well, economists' analyses are not persuasive or interesting to many people. Thus, consumers become increasingly 'rationally ignorant' that they are paying elevated prices for their food -- it is not worth the effort of becoming informed, protesting or caring.

Blame is normally laid at the feet of the French for the CAP [the Common Agricultural Policy]. Many see Germany as being the poor soul that was dragged into accepting the CAP as the price for a free market in industrial goods. It should be noted, however, that German agriculture opposed the policy even more so because it feared the CAP would reduce its protections, which were the highest in Europe at the time. The farm lobby in Germany had held the country captive since the tariff-wall days of Otto von Bismarck. With the highest support prices in the EEC, Germany feared that harmonization would bring painful price cuts for its politically influential arable farmers.

--Brian Ó Caithnia, "Compounding Agricultural Poverty: How the EU's Common Agricultural Policy Is Strangling European Recovery," in Institutions in Crisis: European Perspectives on the Recession, ed. David Howden, New Thinking in Political Economy (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011), 202.