The Post War era has seen UK agriculture experience mixed fortunes. Following the scarred memories of food shortages farming experienced one of its regular cyclical booms in the sixties and seventies with guaranteed prices that pushed forward production to improve the level of self sufficiency demanded by the politicians. In continental Europe this encouragement was provided by the emerging Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which Britain joined in 1973. The CAP promoted greater food production by different methods based on intervention buying at guaranteed prices when there were surpluses only to release the products back on the market at times of shortage. This system worked effectively while the periods of excess were smaller than the periods of surplus. The eighties saw the reversal of this pattern and the establishment of unacceptably high levels of intervention stocks of all major commodities. The system became unworkable and although the French and Germans fought to retain the status quo, the old CAP had become not only indefensible but critically not in the best interests of either consumer or farmer.