Review of the Year: CAP reform

Farmers are being urged to brace themselves as CAP reform is finally implemented following lengthy negotiations, which culminated in a deal announced in mid-2012.

This round of CAP reform was meant to result in an agreement that was simpler, better for the environment and better for farmers and taxpayers. But getting it signed off by all 27 EU member states was never going to be easy.

The CAP is arguably less common than it ever was – with individual member states granted permission by Brussels to decide how best to implement the reform package. As a result, farmers can be forgiven for suspecting that their counterparts elsewhere might be getting a better deal.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the UK, where agriculture is already devolved to the four administrations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – even though the UK has only one seat in the EU council of agriculture ministers.

English farmers feel particularly aggrieved by DEFRA plans to reduce direct payments by 15% and use the money to fund rural development measures and agri-environment schemes at a time when other countries are moving cash in the opposite direction.

But Scottish farmers also feel hard done by. Scottish rural affairs minister Richard Lochhead said Scotland’s farmers were being unfairly deprived of hundreds of millions of euros after DEFRA said the four home nations would all bear the same percentage cut in the CAP budget.

Meanwhile, Welsh farmers hoping for a significant reduction in modulation are likely to be disappointed. Welsh farm minister Alun Davies is expected to make an announcement on the modulation rate in January.

Farmers everywhere say a drop in direct support would undermine competitiveness unless farmers everywhere else face the same reduction. But environmental campaigners argue that money should be spent rewarding producers for looking after the countryside, rather than on boosting output.

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