Dairy crisis

Quite rightly Elizabeth Marshall (Letters, 7 February) wants issues of foreign policy to figure large in the election campaign.

Perhaps an unusual issue for foreign policy debate would be agriculture, especially the dairy sector crisis.

How frequently do politicians from all the parties give any time for discussion of this problem?

Even mainstream economics seems to fight shy of policy proposals for an industry currently in crisis.

What, for example, is the 
financial state of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) with 29 EU members?

Isn’t it time to revisit the role of the CAP now dairy products are traded worldwide?

Perhaps it is time to recognise that agriculture is a global industry in mainly free markets.

Can EU “protectionism” work with trade barriers, subsidies etc with widely divergent levels of agricultural development?

Domestic policy and action is tightly constrained in globalised capitalism to measures like marketing rebranded Scottish dairy products.

Arguably, agriculture products are now a foreign policy issue and need foreign policy solutions like international production agreements.

Ellis Thorpe

Old Chapel Walk

Inverurie