There is a “direct line” between Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and food security that "must be recognised", according to the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA).

The association's president, Denis Drennan added that “a fundamental reorientation” must occur.

He said: “ICMSA has been pointing out for now for some time that the elevation of the ‘land ownership’ model of CAP at the expense of the original ‘food production’ model was going to have a negative impact on the volumes of food being produced by active farmers.”  

“Put at its most blunt: if someone who has a few donkeys on a few hundred acres of mountain is eligible for higher direct supports than someone totally dependent on farming and milking cows twice daily, what does that tell you about how the EU sees food production?"   

The ICMSA president said that even if the overall volumes of food being produced through farming do not fall, the means by which that food is going to be produced will change.

“We are moving steadily towards much fewer and much larger farms,” he said.

Rebalancing

The ICMSA president warned: “If the next CAP doesn’t begin the process of rebalancing direct payments away from the sterile ‘land ownership’ model and back towards supporting active farmers producing our food, then the question of food security starts to take real shape, because, quite literally, we just won’t have the people on the ground. 

“If it is, it’s a ‘food superpower’ off the backs, skills and investment of our farmers."

He said, without a next generation of Irish farmers coming through, "we just won’t have the food in which to be a superpower".

Drennan added a warning about potential consequences to “complacency”.

He said: “This complacency that this will just keep rolling along – despite all the signals that the next generation aren’t coming through – and that the farmers will just keep on putting up with a manifestly unfair and defective CAP is emerging as the biggest challenge of them all and will be the ‘rock’ on which the illusion of food security finally crashes.”

CAP post-2027

This summer saw the publication of a key European Parliament report on CAP.

German MEP Norbert Lins, who is spearheading the work of the parliament's agriculture committee on the post-2027 CAP, formally published his report in June.

This report is set to become the committee's position on the next CAP, and will therefore form the basis of the parliament's position as a whole as it negotiates the next CAP with EU member states.

It includes many important details and clarifications that are set to be influential in how the next CAP looks.

For example, Lins' report introduces an amendment to the European Commission's proposals - first published in 2025 to considerable criticism from both farm organisations and environmental groups - that would create a new sub-article not found in the commission's text.

That sub-article outlines important definitions on terms like 'farmer', 'active farmer' and 'young farmer'.

For the purpose of the CAP regulations, the report outlines that a farmer would be defined as a natural or legal person whose farm is situated in the EU; and whose principal activity is agricultural activity or is engaged in a minimum level of agricultural activity.

What constitutes an agricultural activity would be defined by the member states in the CAP chapters of the National and Regional Partnership Plan (NRPP), which is the commission's proposed framework for dishing out EU money to member states under the bloc's next seven-year budget for 2028-2034.

What constitutes a minimum level of agricultural activity would also be left up to member states to decide, according to Lins' plans.