It’s not simple to understand, it’s not a riveting read , but it is very important – it’s the EU Budget announcement!
The overall budget goes up but CAP funding goes down. Fears, which were absolutely justified according to insiders, that the ‘good’ bits of the CAP, Pillar 2, would be hacked into, disproportionately hard, did not come to pass. Thank you to all those who emailed President Barroso on this subject – making a fuss can only have helped prevent an even worse outcome. But the outcome is not good.
The Rural Development elements of the CAP decrease by 7% in real terms meaning that there will be less and less good done by them at a time when wildlife is suffering across the European Union – in the UK it will mean that the queues of farmers who want to enter agri-environment schemes will grow as the available funds shrink – the CAP isn’t working for nature.
In fact the CAP isn’t working for nature or for farmers or for taxpayers. And this budget will take the CAP through until 2020 or so, so in theory the opportunities for reform diminish at a time when reform is still desperately needed. But that is not good enough. There are always opportunities within the system to engineer change and if you are a campaigner you don’t have to accept what a discredited system offers you. I hope that environmental groups can forge much stronger links with the public, across Europe, and be a progressive force for change over the next few months and years and give us all a better CAP.
Will farmers be on the side of a fairer CAP – fairer to taxpayers and to nature? Certainly some will – many UK farmers joined the RSPB’s campaign and spoke out for the need to protect Pillar 2 payments. The CLA were quick to claim a share of the credit for protecting CAP budgets in cash terms (but not inflation-protected) and for the fact that Pillars 1 and 2 were treated in a very similar way. There is more work that the environmental movement can do with those landowners, currently represented by the CLA, who are environmentally literate and are prepared to argue where it matters for long-term environmental improvement – and for a system of agriculture payments which helps us get there. In contrast, the thoroughly anti-environmental NFU is pretty much beyond hope under the present leadership which can only come out with statements about global food security interspersed with comments praising biofuel production.
And while the NFU at the top is thoroughly anti-environmental it becomes difficult for environmental groups to work with farmers as a whole. That is why the RSPB, which is the leading environmental organisation when it comes to understanding and seeking to influence farming practice, adopted a twin-track approach of working with individual farmers who were wildlife-friendly – and there are of course thousands of those farmers – whilst using a spoon with a long handle when dealing with the NFU hierarchy. Of course, farmers who are members of the NFU do have the solution in their own hands – vote in a leadership that can speak to the public on a range of issues in an intelligent and consistent way. CAP is not the only place which is due for reform.
I would be wary over the next few months about any moves to pillage Pillar 2 in order to spend more money on ‘competitiveness’ instead of using it for environmental recovery. Notice how the NFU, and the CLA, always use the word competitiveness so freely. And Agriculture Minister Jim Paice is also fond of using this term. Be wary of moves to syphon off money that could be spent effectively on Higher Level Stewardship projects which will help protect the landscape and nurture nature and instead spend it on further industrialisation of the countryside.
And this sorry budget increases the need to get the very highest value for money out of the way we spend that money back here in the UK. I wonder how Defra is getting on with reviewing the ELS scheme conditions and arrangements – that’s a pot of money that isn’t working hard enough for me, the taxpayer. I must find out.
The CAP still needs to be reformed. It is a system which works badly for the environment and badly for the taxpayer. It works well for some farmers and badly for others – it works least well for those who need the most help. This latest EU announcement is not as bad as it could be – things rarely are – but it is still bad. And where things are bad then it is necessary to seek to change them.
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i understand there are quite a few areas of money in the new CAP budget proposals which are labelled for “green” purposes but which are, at this stage, rather undefined. It seems to me that a lot of lobbying and campaining will be needed by the conservation movements in the coming months up to 2013. As much as possible of these “green” monies must be used to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. In addition the amount of CAP money in the current budget proposals allocated to benefit wildlife needs to be improved and not further reduced in the “negotiating” that lies ahead. We have had the first battle but there are plenty more to come before the final budget is set.
I am also wary of the word green or greening within this budget. This is a word that seems to mean different things to different people. I can see the EU or national governments seeing ‘greening’ as meaning investments in wind power, solar energy or biofuels and that could mean less money for biodiversity. This budget has yet to be argued through and there will be pressures to reduce the top level figure (Didn’t we all put in budgets expecting them to be reduced to where we really wanted them to be). I cannot see CAP retaining the stated level if other areas are being cut. I wish I wasn’t so pessimistic!