EU farmers oppose CAP budget cut
Agricultural support must be maintained to meet growing demand for food, European farm leaders have warned.
The EU budget needed to be decided quickly, said Gerd Sonnleitner, president of the European Committee of Professional Agricultural Organisations (Copa).
Agricultural spending, which is less than 1% of public expenditure, must be kept at current levels until 2020 to ensure we have a viable sector in the future, he said.
The call was echoed by many Copa and General Committee for Agricultural Cooperation in the European Union (Cogeca) presidents who warned of high production costs which barely cover market prices and of bad climatic conditions this year.
The move came after a meeting of European leaders and heads of state in Brussels last month failed to reach a decision on the EU budget.
Mr Sonnleitner called for a quick and positive decision on the budget to enable farmers to implement the future CAP in 2014.
Spending in the agriculture sector was a driver for growth and employment in EU rural areas and has positive knock on effects on other sectors of the economy, he said.
Separate agriculture policies in the 27 member states which also would cost governments far more than the CAP does, he added.
Mr Sonnleitner said he appreciated an announcement by EU farm commissioner Dacian Ciolos to give farmers more flexibility when applying measures to further green the CAP.
The move would give farmers a wider choice of measures so that they can choose those most suited to their own farm situation and most likely to yield environmental benefits.
In the UK, it could mean that farmers who belong to entry-level stewardship automatically meet new EU requirements to undertake environmental measures in return for farm support.
Mr Sonnleitner urged Mr Ciolos to explain in more detail how the idea would work in practice.
“We have no idea how it will work,” he said.
He also raised concern over proposals to create Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs), arguing that it would mean reducing the amount of agricultural land available for production. This will mean less raw materials for the food industry and less feed for livestock, Mr Sonnleitner claimed.
Farmers needed to know if they would be able to grow protein crops which had environmental and biodiversity benefits on EFA land.
Brussels has said previously it believes requirements for farmers to ensure a percentage of their land is in an EFA can be met without taking land additional out of production.
Paterson calls for CAP ‘equivalence’
