I was recently invited to a press conference in Brussels entitled "Who wants to be a farm subsidy millionaire?"
Run by pressure group farmsubsidy.org, it was the culmination of the first ever European Open Data Summit - "a three-day collaboration of journalists, analysts and campaigners committed to the task of exposing government data".
I'm sure it's a worthy cause, but I have to admit, it did not really inspire me to dust off the passport and get over to Brussels. Besides, the information is readily available on the farmsubsidy.org website.
It includes a list of the 710 beneficiaries of the CAP who got more than €1m in support in 2008 and an evaluation of how each member state is performing when it comes to transparency in farm subsidies.
From the data we learn that the biggest pay-out went to sugar company Italia Zuccheri at €140m - just one of 180 Italian beneficiaries to get more than €1m. Spain had the next biggest number of "subsidy millionaires" with 165, followed by France with 142.
The UK, in contrast, had just 21, led by sugar processor the Czarnikow Group with €8.4m. Other well-known names include KG Growers of Kent, Strutt & Parker Farms, the RSPB and the National Trust.
Farmsubsidy.org insists it is neither for nor against farm subsidies. It says it is purely motivated by the desire to introduce more transparency into the CAP.
But I'm sure it has a hidden agenda. Why else publish such a "rich list" if not to elicit the usual rash of headlines about "subsidy millionaires" and "fat cat farmers" milking the EU budget.
Demonising companies and individuals for receiving large support payments has, to my mind, always been misplaced.
For a start, it's little surprise that sugar processors currently top the CAP payments league table, since they are involved in a major restructuring scheme designed to cut EU production and comply with WTO rules.
And at farm level, there has never been any logic to subsidy caps. Since decoupling, direct payments to farmers are supposed to be about the delivery of public goods, and it is often large farmers that are doing the most.
It is also the case that large farmers tend to employ more people, both directly and indirectly. Furthermore, restricting subsidy according to farm size can only act as a disincentive to efficiency.
The amount of data "exposed" by farmsubsidy.org is quite impressive - but I'm not convinced it actually achieves anything useful.
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