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!
Hi,
I very much concur with this view from George Monbiot and fail to understand why the RSPB has not targetted the gross recipients of state largesse. The silence is deafening and frankly "The Home for Wildlife" stuff is touching but largely ineffective vis scale. Why no TV adverts on CAP reform ? You have missed the opportunity for 7 years now.
Peter
Robber Barons
July 1, 2013
73
Why do we ignore the most blatant transfer of money from the poor to the rich?
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 2nd July 2013.
It’s the silence that puzzles me. Last week, the Chancellor stood up in parliament to announce that benefits for the very poor would be cut yet again(1). On the same day, in Luxembourg, our government battled to maintain benefits for the very rich. It won. As a result, some of the richest people in Britain will each continue to receive millions of pounds in income support from taxpayers.
There has been not a whimper of protest. The Guardian hasn’t mentioned it. UK Uncut is silent. So – at the other end of the spectrum – is the UK Independence Party.
I’m talking about the most blatant transfer of money from the poor to the rich that has occurred in the era of universal suffrage. Farm subsidies. The main subsidy – the single farm payment – is doled out by the hectare. The more you own or rent, the more money you receive.
Since 1999, more progressive European nations have been trying to limit the amount of public money a farmer can capture under the Common Agricultural Policy(2). It looked as if, this year, they might at last succeed. But two governments in particular resisted, throughout the negotiations that ended last week: those resolute champions of the free market, Germany and the United Kingdom(3,4,5). Thanks to their lobbying, any decision has yet again been deferred(6).
There were two proposals for limiting handouts to the super-rich, known as capping and degressivity. Capping means that no one should receive more than a certain amount: the proposed limit was €300,000 a year(7). Degressivity means that, beyond a certain point, the rate received per hectare begins to fall. This was supposed to have kicked in at €150,000(8). The UK’s environment secretary, Owen Paterson, knocked both proposals down.
When our government says “we must help the farmers”, it means “we must help the 0.1%”. Most of the land here is owned by exceedingly wealthy people.
Some of them are millionaires from elsewhere: sheikhs, oligarchs and mining magnates who own vast estates in this country. Though they might pay no taxes in the UK, they receive millions in farm subsidies. They are the world’s most successful benefit tourists. Yet, amid the manufactured terror of immigrants living off British welfare payments, we scarcely hear a word raised against them.
The minister responsible for cutting income support for the poor, Iain Duncan Smith, lives on an estate owned by his wife’s family. Over the past ten years, it has received €1.5m in income support from taxpayers(9). How much more obvious do these double standards have to be before we begin to notice?
Thanks in large part to subsidies, the value of farmland in the UK has tripled in ten years(10): it has risen faster than almost any other speculative asset. Farmers are exempted from inheritance tax and capital gains tax. They can build, without planning permission, structures which lesser mortals would be forbidden to erect, boosting both their capital and income. And they have a guaranteed income from the state. Yet all we hear from their leaders is one long whinge(10).
I have yet to detect a word of gratitude from the National Farmers’ Union to the hard-pressed taxpayers who keep its members in such style. The NFU, dominated by the biggest landowners, has a peculiar genius for bringing out the violins. It pushes forward small, struggling hill farmers. The real beneficiaries of its policies are the arable barons hiding behind them.
An uncapped subsidy system damages the interests of small farmers. It reinforces the economies of scale enjoyed by the biggest landlords, helping them to drive the small producers out of business. A fair cap (say €30,000) would help small farmers compete with the big ones.
So here’s the question: why do we keep deferring to Big Farmer? Why do its sob stories go unchallenged? Why is this spectacular feudal boondoggle tolerated in the 21st Century?
Here are three possible explanations. A high proportion of the books aimed at very young children are about farm animals. There is usually one family of every kind of animal, and they live in harmony with each other and the rosy-cheeked farmer. Understandably, slaughter, butchery, castration, separation, crates and cages, pesticides and slurry never feature. The petting farms which have sprung up around Britain reify and reinforce this fantasy. Perhaps these books unintentionally implant, at the very onset of consciousness, a deep, unquestioned faith in the virtues of the farm economy(11).
Perhaps too, after being brutally evicted from the land through centuries of enclosure, we have learnt not to go there, even in our minds. To engage in this question feels like trespass, though we have handed over so much of our money that we could have bought all the land in Britain several times over. Perhaps we also suffer from a cultural cringe towards people who make their living from the land and the sea, seeing their lives – however rich and cossetted they are – as somehow authentic while ours feel artificial.
Whatever the reason may be, it’s time we overcame these inhibitions and confronted this unembarrassed robbery of the poor by the rich. The current structure of farm subsidies epitomises the British government’s defining project: capitalism for the poor, socialism for the rich.
www.monbiot.com
Peter Plover