The EU's Common Agricultural Policy re-emerges into the public arena every few years for a heated discussion. This year's most-quoted fact is probably the intended "shock statistic" that nearly 40% of the EU budget is spent on agricultural support.

For all their usefulness, statistics are often misleading or downright devious. 40% of the EU's budget sounds a lot, but here's another statistic: that 40% is only 0.4% of the EU's GDP, less than we spend on most other key policy areas which are dealt with at national and European level.

There are two reasons why this tiny proportion of GDP seems to be such a large proportion of the EU's budget:

• The first reason is that the EU's budget as a whole is itself only a tiny proportion of GDP - around 1%, which is mere pocket change in international terms, despite regular attempts by UKIP and the BNP to suggest that the EU budget is massive.


• The second reason is that agriculture is just about the only policy area which is financed entirely out of the European-level budget; other areas of spending are drawn from national-level budgets or jointly. If this were not the case, agricultural spending would be much more comparable to other areas.

Add to this the fact that CAP reform has already brought the figure down from 70% to the current 40% (and this is projected to fall still further) and the situation suddenly looks a lot less pessimistic.

And incidentally, guess what proportion of EU land is used for agriculture? You've guessed it - about 40%.