The community pages of our website have been having their annual health check which means that I am only now able to reflect on last week's CAP announcement.
I said last week that we were extremely disappointed with the outcome and we are not alone. Read the reaction of Alan Matthews (respected Professor in economics at Trinity college, Dublin) here, and IEEP here. Both point out this reform's environmental shortcomings. Although Agriculture Commissioner Ciolos has repeatedly insisted that this round of reform represents a 'paradigm shift' (a game changer for the likes of you and me) for protecting the environment, the reverse is actually the case. Despite our initial hopes that 'greening' would raise the bar for environmental protection across Europe, the reality is anything but - the new CAP, with its 'green' payment, is greenwash and represents the latest missed opportunity to make the CAP work harder for the environment.
As the recent State of Nature report highlighted (with 60% of farmland species we monitor being in decline, we know that current efforts to are inadequate. We have also argued that radical changes are needed in farm policy to protect what pockets of genuinely High Nature Value farming we have left let alone ensuring the rest of our farmland (which accounts for 70% of our land) provides the much needed space for nature alongside food production. The situation is just as challenging across the EU given that there are 300 million fewer birds than there were forty years ago.
This deal will do very little to improve the prospects of our wildlife during the lifetime of the policy (it will run to 2020, a year which coincides with the international commitment to halt and reverse biodiversity declines). Nor will it help farming to adopt more sustainable land management practices or represent a better return for the public's massive investment (over 50bn Euros per year).
There's no getting around it, this deal is dreadful but there are still some limited glimmers of hope. Each Member State has a significant amount of flexibility to implement the new CAP deal, particularly around greening, the transfer of funds between the CAP's two pillars and what measures it prioritises in Rural Development. Sadly we know that in many Member States this flexibility will actually lead to environmental delivery being scaled back.
But in the UK we have hope and expectation that Ministers will be brave enough to make the right choices. Owen Paterson, Defra's Secretary of State and the UK's negotiator throughout the CAP process, has been vocal about his belief that CAP funds should be used to support farmers and land managers to deliver environmental public goods. The next few months will be the opportunity to match this noble rhetoric with reality, and we hope that this approach is adopted by Mr Paterson counterparts in the devolved administrations.
We're particularly hoping for a positive announcement that the maximum allowed 15% of funds will be transferred from Pillar I direct payments to boost agri-environment expenditure. As our CAP press release highlights (see here), 'modulation' isn't universally hated by farmers (something some farming unions would have you believe), in fact it's something progressive farmers are openly calling for.
So while we mourn the passing of hopes for a genuinely green CAP reform in 2013, let's look forward: first to some really positive examples of CAP implementation (with the UK leading the way) and then beyond, to our next opportunities to tackle one of the biggest drivers of land use in the world. We haven't given up the fight!
How on earth is it that this £3.5 billion, of which half comes direct from the British taxpayer, and the rest equally so, but filtered through Brussells goes on getting paid without any cuts and without any question or concern ? Most ironic of all is the revelation that the deputy chairman of UKIP is collecting £55,000 from the CAP without shame or, one suspects, any concern that this bonanaza is going to go away anytime soon.
I don't actually think this money should be taken away from the countryside - but it needs to be spent on what we need today and not the way out of date need to support agriculture at all costs. Quite apart from what its doing to wildlife, CAP isn't doing much good for the people it is most meant to help - marginal farmers - with people leaving the land in droves across the EU - and in contrast to Britain where their houses are quickly occupied by retirees, in France, Spain, Italy and Greece it means whole villages depopulated and, ironically, a new conservation challenge as wildlife rich grazing gets taken over by scrub with loses to butterflies and flora. More directly, there is the impact of intensive land management with increased flooding and a landscape stretched to the limits for food production and in no fit shape to absorb the impact of more extreme weather - this year it's Germany that has been hit hardest but the spectre of the 2007 summer floods in England is still there.