At the end of last year, the European Commission published proposals to reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Expectations among the farming community were high. It seemed reasonable to expect that the Commission would pave the way for a dynamic new future for European agriculture, creating the right conditions to tackle the monumental challenges that lie ahead.
Instead what we got was a set of proposals that fall well short of the mark and could have serious unintended consequences.
At the heart of the Commission’s plan is a list of complicated new measures for the CAP’s direct payments. Capping, greening, economic tests, small farmers support schemes and increased ‘coupled’ production support are all part of the mix that forms the most complicated scheme we have ever been presented with. Clearly the message that farmers crave a simpler CAP hasn’t got through.
The Commission justifies all these new measures on the basis that they will better target and justify the CAP budget. But how does that square with the global challenge of feeding nine billion by 2050?
The EC proposes that every claimant with arable or permanent crop land set aside seven per cent of that land for ecological focus areas. What precisely will count towards these areas will be decided later. There are suggestions that solitary trees, hedges and buffer strips would count, but these areas are unlikely to add up to the seven per cent required. Productive land will therefore have to be set aside to meet this demand, regardless of the loss in output or impact on farm finances.
Another measure is ‘crop diversification’, whereby farmers with more than three hectares of land will be required to grow three different crops on that land. The main crop can be no more than 70 per cent of the area and the third crop must be no less than five per cent of the area. The loss in market orientation and increased bureaucracy is mind-boggling.
The proposals to ‘green’ the payments have certainly caused the most controversy both at an English and European level. The European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee recently tabled over 7,500 amendments to the Commission’s proposals for the CAP, with over 600 specifically on greening alone.
These issues and many more will be the subject of great debate and late night negotiations in the coming months. There is certainly a big job on our hands to knock these proposals back into shape, but organisations like the NFU will be there throughout the process to put forward the case for productive, competitive agriculture which has sustainability at its heart.-
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