Industry split over CAP reform vision

DEFRA secretary Caroline Spelman’s vision for CAP reform has been welcomed by landowners, but dubbed flawed by farmers in Scotland.

The Country Land and Business Association said Mrs Spelman’s speech at the Oxford Farming Conference paved the right way forward.

UK’s farmers needed to get a higher share of the overall CAP, it said. But DEFRA appeared to be moving towards a policy capable of delivering enough food to feed a growing population while still protecting the environment.

However, NFU Scotland questioned some of the assumptions. NFU Scotland chief executive James Withers said DEFRA appeared to be ignoring current imbalances in supply chain arrangements and their impact on producers.

“To suggest that rising food prices is paving the way for a quick move towards support removal is naïve,” he said. “The over-arching trend since the last reform of the CAP in 2003 is not rising farmgate prices.

“The most notable trend has been greater volatility, both for inputs and outputs from farms. On top of this, the power of the supermarkets is not working in the best interests of the country or its consumers.”

NFU president Peter Kendall said the union believed that the CAP must also continue to do its part for the environment and shared the UK government’s view that this was best achieved through targeted rural development programmes rather than more conditions placed on direct payments.

“We all want to get to a place where farming in Europe can be less dependent on support but there has to be recognition that this requires a long-term strategy that includes addressing the problems that continue to exist in the market – volatility and abuse of power.”

ofc2011