In the next week or two, Defra is set to release their proposals for the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in England. The rest of the UK is either already consulting on theirs, as in Northern Ireland and Wales, or planning to do so.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the future shape of the CAP will have a significant, and in some instances decisive influence over the future shape of our countryside, and many of the species that call it home.  It is the single biggest opportunity to do something to address the declines in farmland wildlife documented in the recent State of Nature report: not just farmland birds (↓50% over the last four decades) but also carabid beetles (↓64%) and farmland moths (↓70%).

I’ve written about the CAP many times before (for example see here and here), and it can be an impenetrable and frustrating policy for all involved, for the civil servants responsible with drawing it up, NGOs trying to keep up with the process but especially the farmers tasked with making sense of it so they can adapt their businesses.  

At its root though, the CAP is a multi-billion pound policy which has the potential to do both harm to the natural environment, but also a great deal of good.  Where the balance falls is in large part down to each government in how they implement it, and between now and early next year, Defra will be deciding how to do so in England. 

The consultation Defra publish will be the best chance that the public have had to influence the shape of this critical policy for around seven years, and it will be the last chance to do so until 2020.  

So, I will be using this blog over the next few days to talk all things CAP (covering exciting topics such as "transfers", "greening", "scheme design", "institutional architecture"), and outline our views on just what Defra should be doing to ensure the CAP delivers for the environment, and in the process, for the public purse.  

And that last point is key.  For a policy with such a low profile, the CAP represents a large amount of public money. Between 2014 and 2020, nigh on £20 billion of public money will be spent in the UK alone. In 2012, UK farmers and land managers received £3.26 billion in public payments, with £2.055 billion of this being spent in England.

Big issue number 1: Transfers

We’ve been campaigning to reform the CAP for years, focusing our efforts to shift this expenditure away from direct subsidies, (whose objectives are poorly defined and often inefficiently achieved), to payments for public goods, such as an attractive countryside, rich in wildlife to which people have access. In the jargon, this means moving money from Pillar I direct payments, to Pillar II Rural Development Programmes including agri-environment schemes such as England’s Higher Level Stewardship.

Despite our best efforts, and the efforts and many others besides across Europe, direct payments will still receive around 75% of the CAP budget.  

To his credit, Secretary of State Own Paterson has been one of the few progressive voices during this round of reform, and has led the Defra fight to boost funding for Pillar II. As a result, the final deal, rubber stamped just last week, offers the scope to transfer 15% of direct subsidies toward Pillar II, and therefore the agri-environment schemes which will be so important to the conservation of our wildlife.  Yet, the opposition against transfers, led by the NFU, is vocal.  There have been scare-stories in the farming press about this being farmers' money and that it will somehow be taken away from them.  This is nonsense. In reality, money transferred will primarily be used to reward farmers that help give wildlife a home on their farms.  

It is important that the Secretary of State sticks to his guns, transfers the full 15% into Pillar II and continues to argue for the CAP to move towards a policy focused on the provision of public goods, from which the whole of society can benefit.

Encouragingly, the Secretary of State seems firm on this maximum transfer, recently confirming in the House of Commons his ‘long standing belief’ that it’s the right thing to do, and our own Westminster Wigeon tells me that the message was the same at fringe meetings at the Conservative Party Conference this week. This step is essential to ensure that the funding is available for the agri-environment schemes which will be the key mechanism needed for government to meet it commitments for example in the Natural Environment White Paper and in Biodiversity 2020.  More importantly, it will be farmers that enter these schemes who will provide a lifeline for some of our most threatened species such as turtle dove, lapwing and curlew.

In reality though, a maximum transfer is just the first step that Defra need to take. Over the next few days I'll outline other decisions that Government need to take in the next few months, and the tests that we will apply to assess if there proposals are to get  anywhere near a CAP that works for wildlife friendly farming.

For now, I'll leave you with this question...

How would you spend c£2.055 billion of English taxpayers' money a year?   [This is equivalent to the salaries of 66,151 nurses per year, the gas and electricity bills of 1,447,183 households, 146 secondary schools, tuition fees for 228,333 students per year,  the annual public funding for 9098 libraries or you could cover the  annual cost of environmental options needed to meet all of England’s environmental policy objectives and have c£800m to spend on other things - see page iv of this government report here.]

It would be great to hear your views.

  • I am quite happy to admit that I am a bit of what the Norse called a "berserker" and that in the red mists of battle I sometimes lose the plot but I want it to be clear in your mind Martin and in that of Mr Clarke that the decision not to identify the principle recipients of CAP largesse is a political one as the Cuckoo goes extinct across our farmland. I now regard the nature conservation alliance as the principle block to reform of the wider European CAP. I suspect that given the privilege of your backgrounds that you are unable "to see" that but you have consistently failed to build an alliance with small farmers that will weigh with politicians at 3am as I forecast in 2012. Politics is visceral not simply rational. I have always respected and loved RSPB reserves but they are no longer my inheritance but I am now starting to consider parking my yurt on your lawns and in the run up to the next general election I would have you bare that in mind.

  • Reading Sooty's response, I think Owen Paterson is doing even more for farming than might be obvious: trying to move farming towards a model that is more acceptable to the people paying for it. Land managers have got to make a profit (what to most of us is an 'income'. As I've said before, as a forester I'm very unhappy that so much of what we contribute from landscape to clean water isn't deemed to be something the urban population who benefit want to pay for. So I strongly believe that land managers (farmers and foresters) should be paid for things that aren't wooly 'non-market benefits', but rather things the cities have decided they won't pay for - but that may mean doing things differently.and if maximising what the UK taxpayer is allowed to spend on more wildlife and a very modest relaxation of the intensity of our farming, I'm right behind Owen.  

  • Martin,I take your points on board but yourself and others seem to forget that (1)farmers have always in history been expected to produce food and really the focus by a very small number of rspb members,even a % of rspb members as not all are committed to wildlife for sure this in the scheme of hundreds of years of history is a relatively new issue perhaps only 30 years.All the nonsense about hedgerow removal for instance,no one ever mentions how many miles of hedges farmers have propagated,by my reckoning just about every hedgerow in the country was propagated by previous generations of farmers and there has always been things altering in everything including farming all through history.

    Subsidies were introduced for the benefit of general public to have cheaper food not for farmers benefit and those wishing for lots more emphasis on wildlife as opposed to food prices are in a minority of 1 to 60,my calculation on that if correct is less than 2%.

    My guess is the most ironic part about all this is that while the rspb produce almost nothing in food compared to what the same land would produce under competent farming I guess they receive massive amounts of subsidy money that was intended for the food supply of this country.

    On another subject,what a disaster the Skydancer project is.It has overseen the poor result of nesting H H down from 4 to 0 over the last 4 years or so.In any other business heads would roll but telling

    children etc about it is considered a success,what rubbish.

    Funny really the person running the blog never prints criticism.

    Head in sand job.Let us all think we are wonderful and only take on board compliments.    

  • Nightjar - forgot to say that, yes, we'll be explaining how members/supporters can get involved soon.  

  • Sooty - in response to your challenge I simply make three points:

    a) the reality is that this money is going to support farming but I argue that it is right to have a public debate about how it is spent - I would go further and say that it should work harder for public benefits than it currently does

    b) you are right about food prices - I do not think that the drive keep food prices low should come at the expense of salaries of agriculture workers or the environment - this debate is not properly out in the open

    c) members of the RSPB who voluntarily and generously pay their subscriptions to the RSPB do, both through the elected Council and at the AGM, have a role in determining how the money is spent.  With our AGM just nine days away, I am acutely aware of this.

    And maybe I can add a fourth point, we neither intend to be farmer friendly' or 'farmer hostile'.  We will work with and support progressive parts of the farming industry who want to produce good food and at the same time help farmland wildlife thrive on their land.  And we want policy and subsidies that make it easier for them to do that.