Farming land near Sault in southern France

European agriculture ministers are expected to agree to proposals to increase the amount of agricultural land under cultivation. The European Commission wants to lift the restrictions in the coming year, following a sharp increase in prices for many agricultural commodities. This report from Jonny Dymond:

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So the European Commission is asking agriculture ministers to scrap the set-aside rule, a policy which forced and compensated farmers to leave ten percent of their land fallow.

Set aside both cuts production and leads to environmental benefits, wildlife flourishes in the uncultivated land. But the European Commission believes that scrapping the rule for the coming year could boost production by at least ten million tonnes of grain and will have an impact on prices.

Jonny Dymond, BBC News, Brussels

Listen to the words

Soaring
rising quickly and sharply

reversing
changing, going backwards, or undoing something

a decade's
ten years'

Poor harvests and strong demand
not many crops and a lot of people who want to buy them

to scrap
to stop

compensated
gave money to someone in exchange for something that has been lost or damaged (here, to farmers for not being allowed to grow crops)

fallow
land that is not used for growing crops but is left to rest for a time (to improve the quality of it) before being used again as farming land

flourishes
grows very well or successfully

uncultivated
land that is not used for farming or growing crops

boost
increase

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