The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the European Union's farm-subsidy programme. Despite agriculture accounting for only about 1% of the EU's GDP, roughly a third of the EU budget goes to farmers through the CAP. Only about a quarter of CAP payments go to "agri-environment" schemes that reward farmers for activities such as establishing hedgerows or growing plants that feed insects and birds; the rest is still paid per hectare. European farmers' quasi-monopoly on political sympathy has been eroding: the EU-Mercosur deal was signed despite farmer opposition; Ukraine's potential EU accession threatens to redirect CAP funds to its vast farmlands; and the European Commission has proposed roughly 30% real-terms cuts to the CAP. Farmers have secured some concessions, including strict Mercosur meat quotas, loosened rules on pesticides and animal welfare, and delayed CAP benefits for Ukraine. But competing priorities—defence spending, industrial competitiveness and geopolitical imperatives—are inexorably reducing farmers' political heft.
The duke had a mind that ticked like a clock and, like a clock, it regularly went cuckoo.