Next month’s CAP reform must ensure that the policy remains fair and fit for purpose, rather than becoming fixated on the size of the budget, NFU President Peter Kendall says. He delivered the NFU’s view at the Westminster Food and Nutrition Forum seminar on UK farming and the CAP – where he argued that the policy has changed and is now a force for good, and that it must not be allowed to become an environmental and social policy at the expense of its agricultural focus.
“What matters to the NFU is not principally the scale of the budget, but having a policy that is fit for purpose, that treats farmers, across the EU fairly,” he notes. “The CAP is there to step in where markets fail. The principal challenge for the CAP is to get farming to a place where it can be less reliant on public support. But to achieve this we’ll need to tackle the problems in markets that prevent farmers from making fair returns.”
“The core components of the CAP should be decoupled, direct payments, more focussed and strategic rural development policies and measures that help farmers achieve better, profitable returns from the market.”
Referring to a draft document on CAP reform, Kendall says it was a “disappointment” compared to the boldness of previous reforms. He argues that a renewed focus on the environment loses much of what CAP should be about – agriculture. “I buy into the fact that the CAP has done more than just secure food production. But I fear that the Commission risks falling into the same trap as many environmental and landowner organisations in believing that somehow the CAP and its budget can be defended if only you paint it green.
“When you measure our environmental performance it is clear that the farmed environment is improving. Pursuing an environmental policy will create a permanent dependency on public support and make it hard for farmers to ever derive a decent return from the market,” he notes. “The CAP has achieved a great deal so far. For this to continue, officials must stop, think and even draw inspiration from documents recently released by the French and German governments and the European People’s Party. UK farmers will look on, eager that the Commission will take a path that builds on previous reforms and champions a modern, productive agriculture.”