CAP ‘in urgent need of rebalancing’ towards food production
The Irish Creamery and Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) has told EU Agriculture Commissioner Christoph Hansen that there is a need for a "clear definition of an active farmer".
The association outlined its key issues for Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2027 on the final day of the National Ploughing Championships after a visit to its stand by the commissioner.
ICMSA president Denis Drennan said that while there were "enormously complex matters to be resolved", some issues were "head and shoulders" over all other considerations in importance and urgency.
He continued: “All the questions around CAP post-2027 must begin with allocating an adequate budget an absolute priority, effective measures to control price, simplification and an EU-wide definition of an active farmer.”
The ICMSA president said it was "an observable fact that CAP had “lost the thread back to its original purpose of supporting food-producing farmers".
He added that this had to be "restored and reinvigorated" in the upcoming CAP reform.
Regulation
Drennan said: “We cannot continue with a situation where food-producing farmers are faced with more and more regulation, less support and a clear absence of measures to address the wildly price volatility that is (a) crippling them and (b) cited by young people interested in farming as the biggest single obstacle to them considering it as a career.
“The very first priority has to be allocating a budget to CAP that is at least equal to the demands made upon it.
“The second has to be addressing ruinous price volatility in a concrete way that goes past vague proposals and can deal with market downturns and end the ‘boom-bust’ cycles that are ruining the farmers producing our food."
Drennan added that if a fraction of the effort the EU puts into "micro-regulation of farming and farm practices" went into designing measures to combat price volatility and "boom-to-bust cycles", then farming and food production would be "immeasurably better off - as would be EU consumers”.
Simplification
The ICMSA president said that the questions of simplification and who should be receiving direct supports are now centre-stage and could no longer be avoided if CAP was to remain in any way relevant.
He said: “Simplification is currently a buzzword at EU level but there is absolutely no sign of it at farm level, and it needs to become a reality at that farm level.
“That can only be delivered through CAP and it has to happen; farmers are just sick of false promises and false dawns on this question of simplification.
“The last issue we highlighted to Commissioner Hansen was the desperate need for a clear definition of an active farmer, and we told him that our preferred definition rested on a stocking rate of 1LU (livestock unit) per hectare.”
Drennan said that the situation cannot continue where food-producing farmers "are seeing their supports decline while landowners producing little or nothing are getting larger payments”.
He added: “The CAP has become completely lopsided away from food production and it is in urgent need of rebalancing.”
