DEFRA to monitor CAP effects

IN ITS RESPONSE to the rural affairs select committee‘s report on CAP reform, DEFRA has revealed that it is to set up what it calls an “environmental observatory”.

The committee report recommended that DEFRA monitor the environmental and socio-economic impact of CAP reform in the UK.

DEFRA revealed in its response that it plans a programme of research to monitor and assess the environmental, economic and social impacts of the CAP reform package in England.

This programme will include the establishment of an “environmental observatory” function to gather data from a wide range of sources in order to identify trends in farming patterns and practices and their resulting environmental impacts.

The observatory will also be given the task of predicting the longer-term impacts of farm practice changes.

According to DEFRA, a “specification for an initial scoping study for such a function is currently being drawn up to establish what to monitor, a baseline against which to make comparisons, the extent to which we can rely on existing surveys of whether we need to modify those surveys or commission entirely new ones to fill gaps in the evidence base.”

The scoping study will also look into how the environmental observatory function can be linked with studies of the socio-economic impacts of CAP reform.