Farming is strategic but there is plenty of room for improvement.
This has been the year European farming is being reshaped to fit better into the Common Agricultural Policy. The EU Commission wants to make CAP greener, fairer, more efficient, and more effective.
A public consultation phase, which closed last month, brought a record response of 5,600 contributions from across Europe.
Global demand for food is outstripping supply. Besides food security, CAP reform is looking at how to meet future challenges of climate change, loss of biodiversity and degradation of water and soil.
The policy, which costs each European household €1,000 every year, has major impacts onthe food we eat, the way land isused, and the quality of theenvironment.
On joining the EU in 2004, new member states were put on aseparate track from the other members for funding per hectare. Older and larger countries were wary of upsetting their own apple cart, with France the main beneficiary of funding for farmers.
Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Cioloș has said clinging to the past was no longer justifiable under a reformed CAP. A funding mechanism built around the strengths of the six original member states in beef, sheep, cereal, dairy and sugar beet farming has finally been deemed to be unfair.
Jack Thurston, co-founder of an organisation tracking farm subsidies, observes that “once you start getting people used to a stream of money, it’s very difficult to take that stream and redirect it to a different place… they built a very strong political lobbying system in order to preserve that”.
The outdated binary approach is being ditched and a new system is on the cards, one that is fair, transparent and adapted to the whole of Europe.
In a recent European Court of Justice ruling on CAP payments the judge accepted the principle that transparency might outweigh the need to protect personal data. The family of a Bulgarian minister were found to be enjoying subsidies while aristocracy, including Crown Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein (who is not even an EU citizen) was receiving more than €2 million for his farmholdings in Austria.
Prince Albert of Monaco and the Duchess of Alba in Spain were also beneficiaries, according to www.farmsubsidies.org, whichis part of the EU transparency project.
Shifting and reshaping of CAP for the 2014-2020 term is expected to release some funds, creating a scramble to be on the receiving end of redistributed payments.
The ideal CAP, as seen by organic farmers, would ensure productivity of land by promoting sustainable farming practices that deliver healthy food and protect the environment.
Allowances must be made for a flexible policy that caters for diverse rural environments. In Malta’s case, our small scale must be more carefully taken into account.
Three per cent leeway on an average-sized EU farm of 12 hectares farm equates at over360 square metres. However, boiling this formula down to reach a Maltese scale would bring infringements for a variation of just three centimetres on paths a metre wide.
European agriculture provides society with a diverse range of public goods. These include environmental public goods such as farmland biodiversity, cultural landscapes, high quality air and water, soil functionality, climate stability through reduced greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration, and resilience to floods.
Other social public goods are rural vitality and food security.
Thurston writes: “The continued long-term capacity of European landmass to be productive for food in 10, 20, 30, 40 years could be considered as a public good. We should therefore be taking measures to protect soil and water, and to prevent speciesnecessary for pollination from being wiped out.”
Legislative proposals for the new policy are expected by next summer, followed by a co-decision between the European Parliament and Council of Ministers. The first exchange of views between ministers was held last week.
At end of day, the new CAP must align with EU 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable andinclusive growth.
The greening of market measures and direct aid to farmers under the new CAP is positive, as long as Pillar Two (rural development) is kept strong. Rural development measures accounted for nearly 80 per cent of funding to Malta last year.
In its initial reaction to theCommission’s communication, the Institute for European Environment Policy said it was a potentially bold reorientation of CAP to meet the needs of society and challenges of the next decade, but was lacking on specifics.
The IEEP said: “Now both courage and clarity will be needed from all the European institutions, including the European Parliament… to bring these initial proposals to a policy that is consonant with the very considerable challenges of the next decade.”
Future challenges for Malta would include a more pro-active role for producer organisations and putting farm advisory services to better use, especially with a view to climate change actions.
Malta’s national climate change strategy has called for a national agricultural policy to be drawn up by the Ministry for Resources and Rural Affairs by 2012.
The reform of CAP coincides with a new proposal by the EU Commission for a framework directive recognising soil as anon-renewable resource.