How does having such a large surplus that you’re an exporter of food jive with national security? It sounds like they already produce more than enough. Exposing food production entirely to market forces is, as you point out, a bad idea.
Sounds like you’ve fallen for some farmer rhetoric.. How is growning crops to feed 28 million pigs to 6 million people? We’d have to eat 5 pigs each.. If it was really about food security, we’d surely plant crops to eat ourselves, which is much more efficient in terms of calorie per m^2.
Meat has many more negative externalities than plants. Thats the argument for substituting green farming.
Of course it’s political.. anything is to some degree.
Because of animals we grow far more grain than we need, giving us a substantial amount of necessary slack. If there is a wide spread crop failure, the price of grain rises, causing ranchers to sell breeding stock they can no longer afford to feed. Then humans then eat the grain instead of the animals.
Growing x100 times the amount of food needed isn’t ‘slack’, its production for export (or feeding pigs to export). We could cut out farmland by 50% and still have more than enough to feed our own population. This food security argument would only hold if there was any possibility of us actually not being able to feed our population.
100X? A chicken is 1.8x and a pig is 3X. A cow is 12X, but that'd only be a relevant figure if humans could eat grass.
> How does having such a large surplus (...)
You should educate yourself. Europe imports around 40% of the agricultural production it consumes.
The "surplus" is referenced in economical value and reflects luxury exports such as wine, which is hardly what keeps Europe alive in case of all-out war.
The whole point of Europe's common agricultural policy is food security including an event of all-out war.
Your comments sound like advocating against having a first-aid kit just because you sell silk scarves.
Please provide some sources, because I think your 40% is also based on monetary and not nutritional value.