As well as keeping poor countries out of lucrative export markets, rich-world farm supports encourage overproduction, which undercuts poor farmers in their domestic markets.
For technology firms, the overproduction of semiconductors, flat screens and computers does not bode well.
For him, the problem with the car industry lies in "the overproduction of cars that nobody wants to buy".
Foreign investors have faced their own pricing troubles in a world gas market that faces overproduction.
But when Mr Hasan set up the cartel in the early 1980s, at the urgent request of Mr Suharto, the plywood business was in crisis, plagued by overproduction and plunging prices.
The trillions of dollars spent supporting farmers in rich countries have led to higher taxes, worse food, intensively farmed monocultures, overproduction and world prices that wreck the lives of poor farmers in the emerging markets.
When I try to understand contemporary China, for instance, I look to the early nineteenth century writings of Thomas Robert Malthus on overproduction and excess capacity.There is a great deal more worth reading at the forum.
And President Clinton devoted his weekly radio address to the plight of the country's farmers—hit hard by overproduction and falling demand in Asia and offered federal dollars to buy up surplus wheat.Then Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, struck a different note.
It is not just that they are supporting a relatively dirty version of ethanol (far better to import Brazil's sugar-based liquor); they are also offsetting older grain subsidies that lowered prices by encouraging overproduction.
Similar policies have proven expensive (and resulted in overproduction) in other countries that have tried them, such as Germany and Spain.The government has also given the go-ahead to High Speed Two, a £12.5 billion plan for a French-style high-speed rail line that would link London to Birmingham and, eventually, Manchester and Leeds.
The fact is that in a world of increasing scarcity of fossil fuels, organic farming provides the only environmentally, or economically, sustainable system for feeding the world.Peter MelchettPolicy directorSoil AssociationBristolSIR – You stated that Fairtrade is a subsidy that encourages overproduction.
