Expenditure under the 2014-2020 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) failed to reduce emissions from agriculture and hasn’t helped farming reach climate targets, according to the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
In a new report, the EU body found that the European Commission attributed over €100 billion of CAP funds during the 2014-2020 period to tackling climate change.
Despite this, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the agriculture sector have “changed little” since 2010, according to the ECA.
The report examined whether the 2014-2020 CAP supported climate mitigation practices with a potential to reduce GHG emissions from three key sources: livestock; chemical fertilisers and manure; and land use (cropland and grassland).
The ECA also examined whether the CAP better incentivised the uptake of effective mitigation practices in the 2014-2020 period than in the 2007-2013 period.
According to the report, livestock emissions, accounting for half of GHG emissions from agriculture – including land use emissions and removals from cropland and grassland – did not decrease between 2010 and 2018.
The ECA claimed that the emissions are directly linked to the size of the livestock herd, with cattle causing two-thirds of those emissions.
It goes on to claim that the CAP “rarely incentivised” potentially effective mitigation measures for emissions from manure management.
“CAP does not seek to limit livestock numbers, nor does it provide incentives to reduce them,” the ECA said.
It went on to say: “The CAP market measures include promotion of animal products, the consumption of which has not decreased since 2014. This contributes to maintaining greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them.”
The court noted that emissions from the use of chemical fertilisers and manure, which account for one-third of EU emissions from agriculture, increased between 2010 and 2018.
The CAP has supported an expansion of organic farming and grain legumes, but the impact of such practices on greenhouse gas emissions is “unclear”, according to the report.
“The CAP has provided little or no support to effective mitigation practices such as nitrification inhibitors or variable rate nitrogen technology,” it continued.
CAP and Ireland
As part of the research, the ECA interviewed farmer representatives, environmental and climate NGOs; and national authorities in Ireland (among other countries).
The countries chosen by the auditors for the report were selected based on the proportion of their agricultural emissions; agricultural activities; and approaches to climate change mitigation and carbon storage.
Ireland was noted as having a “substantial emissions increase” along with Poland and Hungary.
Nitrates
As of 2020, four countries – Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands – have a derogation from the Nitrates Directive on the limit of applied manure.
“These four countries are among the highest GHG emitters per hectare of utilised agricultural area,” the report says.
It went on to note that, since 2014, in Ireland, the area under derogation has increased by 34% and the number of animals in farms with derogations grew by 38%.
In the same period, emissions in Ireland from chemical fertilisers increased by 20%; emissions from manure applied to soils by 6%; and indirect emissions from leaching and run-off by 12%.
Recommendations
The ECA made three broad recommendations.
The first of these is to take action so that the CAP does reduce emissions from agriculture. The second recommendation is for the commission to take steps to reduce emissions from cultivated drained organic soils. The third recommendation was for the commission to report regularly on the CAP’s contribution to climate mitigation.