With regard to your first comment, about whether or not treasury should be spending more money and sending cash out to farmers, I would suggest that it's almost like trying to close the door on the chicken coop after all your chickens are outside. Often I think to subsidize farmers is to spend money very poorly. Unless you can really see where the money's going to go and it is going to get that farmer through to where he's going to be profitable, you're just throwing good money after bad. I think somebody has to eventually look at the subsidy programs and say some of these things just aren't a good investment any more, so let's put money into research, let's put it into better policy, let's put it into whatever. Just because it buys you votes back at home doesn't mean it's a good move.
On December 3rd, 2009. See this statement in context.