Increased food production is at the heart of the European Commission’s plans to reform the CAP.
Such was the claim from agriculture commissioner Dacian Cioloş in an exclusive interview with members of the National Farmers Unions of England, Wales and Scotland.
In a candid interview, reproduced in full below, Mr Cioloş said: “The main role of farmers is and will always be to produce food. Our objective in this reform is to produce more food.”
But he added that food production must be sustainable.
“Productivity must increase in a way that is sustainable for the long term. This is where our moves to better embrace innovation will become of particular importance,” he said.
The Commissioner’s comments came in response to questions sent in by NFU England and Wales and NFU Scotland members as part of a competition to ‘Question the Commissioner’. The best questions were picked out and put to Mr Cioloş.
Maeve Whyte, director of the NFU office in Brussels, said: “We may not agree with many aspects of the Commissioner’s reform proposal but we cannot fault him for being open and approachable. He has maintained from the outset that he wants to listen to farmers and this has been a welcome demonstration of this.
“We will continue to talk to the Commission about CAP reform and it is our top priority to tell him what farmers think. We will certainly hold him to his comment that the CAP’s main objective must be to produce more food.”
Dacian Cioloş interview in full:
How do you intend to make the CAP ‘common’ to all farmers in all Member States?
Angela Sargent, Derbyshire
Farmers in the EU compete on the Single Market with nearly 500 million consumers. We need common rules and a common policy framework. The policy has evolved significantly in the last 20 years, to the extent that European agriculture is more competitive and market-oriented than in the past. For example, the massive surpluses which so dominated the EU in the early 1990s, when I first took an interest in the policy, are now a thing of the past. When farmers decide what they are going to produce this year, their main considerations are the price that they are going to get on the market – rather than what subsidies are available from Brussels.
Nevertheless, the current distribution of funds is too much linked to historic allocations rather than more objective criteria. One of our aims in this reform is therefore to reduce the differences in these allocations. England has already made a significant step forward by moving to a flat-rate payment per hectare, but in Wales and Scotland – and other countries such as France and Italy – we still have direct payments allocated primarily on the basis of what was produced on that farmland in 2000-2002. In fact for some cereals producers around the EU, the allocations can be directly linked to yields in the second half of the 1980s. We can no longer justify this to the taxpayer for the period after 2013. But rest assured, we will make sure that such changes are made gradually.
How can you better ‘police’ the CAP?
Adam Hill, Hampshire
As far as policing is concerned, we have a strict system of auditing, which means that we can claw back money from any Member State if we feel that they haven’t monitored the system well enough – or haven’t responded sufficiently when they have found a problem.
Let me add one further element from the reform that is perhaps relevant with regard to simplification. Our policing role is one of inspecting the inspectors. In our reform, we are proposing to reward those countries or regions which apply the rules best – such that the level of inspections can be reduced for good performers. Whereas we shall be looking for higher levels of inspections – and more controls from our auditors – in regions where evidence shows there is more chance of public funds being spent without sufficiently strict controls.
I have participated in many agri-environment schemes resulting in 13% of my arable area devoted to non-food production resulting in greater biodiversity on my farm but less food produced. Will the commissioner agree that with less food produced, someone somewhere will go hungry? If further measures are to be taken to encourage more biodiversity and take more land out of production will this get worse?
Jim Macaulay, Essex
The main role of farmers is and will always be to produce food. Our objective in this reform is to produce more food – but we have to do it in a way that will mean that we can still produce in 10, 20 or 50 years. Productivity must increase in a way that is sustainable for the long term. This is where our moves to better embrace innovation will become of particular importance. The design of future Rural Development schemes will be up to the authorities in England, Wales and Scotland – and participation by farmers will be voluntary. As regards your broader question about feeding the world, I believe Europe has an important role to play in addressing world hunger – part of this is about our capacity to produce more and better, and the reform will deliver in this respect – for instance, through the big new emphasis on agricultural research. But in this respect, our development policies are also key. We need to work with the poorest countries in the world to boost their agricultural potential and productivity, and to offer new opportunities to smallholder agriculture in particular.
The commissioner has said on many occasions that he wants a CAP that can be justified to European citizens. Rather than greening the CAP, that won't necessarily achieve that aim, why not reward every farmer who brings the public on to their farm and shows them how the CAP funds are spent?
Tom Allen-Stevens, Oxfordshire
Farmers look after roughly 2/3 of the land in the EU. As a result, if we get all farmers to do just a little bit more, then Greening can really make a difference. I certainly agree with your idea of getting the non-farming public to better understand what CAP funds do – and maybe Member States can look at encouraging farm visits under a Rural Development scheme. But let me just add that we are introducing new, results-based rules for Rural Development so that we should in future have more tangible measurements of success. And if we can show by 2020 that the reform has provided substantially more public goods & benefits, then we will be on the right road.
In England there are several charities and institutions that own large areas of agricultural land farmed by much smaller tenants and their families. In many cases the charities and institutions claim part of the Single Farm Payment and/or the agri-environment scheme payment because they own the land, not because they carry out any farming on the land. Can we change this post 2013?
Peter Atkin, Derbyshire
The policy has always been intended to reward the active farmers (rather than landowners). Member States have had the option in recent years specifically to exclude non-agricultural companies from the direct payments system – but no government has taken up this possibility. We hope that our new proposals will also reinforce the status of the active farmer, and close some of the other loopholes which have seen some questionable beneficiaries.
If the Single Farm Payment in Wales is changed from historic to a hectare-based payment, will Wales be allowed to have a transitional period to adapt to the new payment scheme, like England had under the present payment scheme?
John Lowarch, Powys
Yes, we are aware of the potential problems of changing things too quickly. That is why we are proposing to have a transitional period until the start of 2019. I believe it is very important to move in this direction because it is not tenable to maintain a system based on historical references going back well over a decade in many cases.
Given the current economic climate, shouldn't we be more radical in our approach the CAP reform and reward capital investment in farming activity rather than simply rewarding the capital held in land by paying an area payment?
Paul Temple, East Yorkshire
In the current economic climate, it is important that we provide financial stability for forward planning. We believe that this will come with the reformed direct payments system, which will be better-targeted in future. With our investment grants, innovation plans and farm advisory services, we are confident that the new policy will also boost sustainable competitiveness, which will reward those that have invested wisely.
How do you respond to criticism the CAP distorts world trade, inflates world prices and damages farmers in the developing world?
William Butler, Somerset
Maybe the CAP of the 1980’s and early 1990’s was like that, when half the budget was spent on subsidising exports onto world markets. However, the policy has undergone a significant process of reform since 1992 – and our reform is the next step – towards a system where our subsidies are no longer trade distorting, where farming is much more market-oriented and therefore all the structural surpluses have disappeared. Export refunds have now dropped to less than 0.5% of the CAP budget – and in the WTO we have offered to phase them out altogether if everybody else gets rid of their trade-distorting export subsidies. Let me just add that we have set the benchmark with our Everything But Arms agreement. Did you know that the value of EU agricultural imports from developed countries was 20% higher than US, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand put together?
Are you still considering capping for large claimants? If so, why?
Robert Pickard, Cambridgeshire
Yes, this is an issue which we need to address on behalf of the taxpayer. If we are providing direct payments as a basic income support, then, given economies of scale, there comes a moment when income support is no longer justifiable. We are proposing to apply a sliding scale of reductions starting with 20 per cent from €150 000 and rising to an overall cap of €300 000. However, there will be an allowance for salary costs. We have also made clear that any “savings” made through this capping concept will be retained in the Member State concerned and used in particular to foster innovation and investment. I have no problems in explaining to the taxpayer that a large, efficient farm should be supported with public funds for innovative agricultural practices that can help in mitigating climate change or boosting biodiversity – or for the public goods provided by Greening (where no "capping" will apply) - but I do have a problem in justifying unlimited levels of direct income support.
Can member states have more flexibility to get farmers to commit to delivering real ecosystem benefits voluntarily without DG Agri’s strict cross compliance regulation?
Rob Yorke, Monmouthshire
In the reform proposals we are looking to simplify and streamline our cross-compliance rules. But these will remain a requirement for receiving the revised direct payments (apart from greening). On top of this, environmental priorities will be maintained as major elements of the new Rural Development policy - in particular restoring, preserving and enhancing ecosystems. As with all Rural Development schemes, however, the precise programmes in Britain will have to be drawn up by the English, Welsh and Scottish authorities.
What do you see as the main obstacles/issues to you getting what you want for the CAP post 2013?
Emily Rose, Cambridgeshire
This one is very clear – the biggest obstacle we will face is getting the agreement of Finance Ministers and Heads of Government for the budget that we need. Before I took office, there was serious discussion about reducing the CAP budget by more than a quarter. The budget we have put on the table is a freeze at 2013 levels – but even that has been opposed by the net contributing countries to the EU budget (including the UK Treasury). There is no escape from the fact that we need to better target our support systems in a way that is more understandable to the taxpayer. You may have noticed that we are also proposing an increase in allocations for the UK in both the 1st and 2nd Pillars of the CAP. Let me remind you that it is not only in Brussels that you need to lobby!
Do you envisage a time when direct payments will come to an end and farmers will be able to rely solely on the market place to earn a living? If so, when?
Terry Smith, Dorset
The CAP has become more and more market-oriented in the last 20 years, and it remains our firm aim that farmers across the EU should get the vast majority of their revenue from the market. However, last autumn we saw a surge in feed prices, back in January we saw a pigmeat crisis linked to dioxins in Germany and in the summer we saw a massive drop in fresh vegetable consumption linked to e-coli in sprouts. The point is we cannot rely on the market alone for something both as strategically important as food production, and as vulnerable to external events. The sector needs support to help it come to terms with this increasing market volatility and price fluctuation. Direct payments, as we want to redefine them in this reform, should become a form of direct income support. At the same time, given the strain that we already see on our natural resources, we have to ensure that any increase in productivity is done sustainably, without placing an additional burden on our natural resources. In short, we are not only looking for our farmers to be more competitive economically, but also ecologically.
British dairy farmers have lots of milk quota that’s redundant and other countries need extra quota to stop paying fines – why can we not trade our quota across the border?
Mrs Brown, County Durham
We have sent a clear signal about the phasing out of dairy quotas by March 31, 2015. This provides an important period of transition for the sector. I do not think that this is a moment to change the rules again.
Will mandatory dairy contracts help dairy farmers into a better bargaining position with their buyer and therefore provide them with a more sustainable future? If not, what will provide a sustainable future?
Henry James, Worcestershire
Our discussions in the wake of the 2009 dairy crisis showed that some form of mandatory contract would give farmers greater security and a stronger negotiating position in the food supply chain. In fact, in the reform, we are looking to extend this to other sectors. In recent years there has been a greater concentration all the way up the food supply chain, with the most concentration at retail end, and the lowest at the production end – to the extent that the farmer is being squeezed more than ever before. So in the dairy package I presented to Parliament and Member States last December, I have made proposals designed to provide dairy farmers with greater leverage in their negotiations will processors and retailers.
Do you see any place within EU agriculture for the cultivation of GM crops now or in the future? And if so, on what basis? Yield? Reduced chemical inputs over the long term? And if it is upon these two factors, are you aware of evidence to support this outcome from all the other parts of the world where GM crops have been introduced for some time?
Oliver Dowding, Somerset
One of the main problems with GMOs is that European consumers do not want them. Until this changes, it will be difficult to make any progress. However, there is a lot more to research & biotechnology than just GMOs. In fact, with our proposals for the European Innovation Partnership, we have highlighted the importance for agriculture to embrace research and innovation and to work more closely with science to address the challenges ahead.
What would you like you legacy to be as Agriculture Commissioner?
Lynne Gordon, Cornwall
This is not yet the time to talk about a legacy. We are acting now to build a more competitive and sustainable farming sector, equipped for the challenges ahead.
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