Farming News - CAP support payments only for active farmers - TFA
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CAP support payments only for active farmers - TFA
Targeting active farmers will be key to cap reform success
The Tenant Farmers Association’s National Chairman, Greg Bliss will be using the TFA’s presence at this year’s LAMMA show to underline the need for the Common Agricultural Policy to focus support only on active farmers.
“Prior to the publication of the European Commission's Communication on the future of the CAP issued towards the end of last year, the TFA in its 2020 Vision for Agriculture argued that measures were needed to ensure that support, paid either as direct payments under Pillar 1 or for agri-environment schemes under Pillar 2, was received only by those individuals actively farming the land for which support payments were being received. We are therefore very pleased that this has been picked up by the European Commission as a key plank of the future direction for CAP," said Mr Bliss.
"The TFA has been concerned for some time that despite having other individuals farming their holdings, landlords and other non-farmers have been able to access both Pillar 1 and more particularly Pillar 2 payments through inserting clauses in tenancy and other agreements which require those actively farming the land to meet scheme requirements to enable the non-active owner of the land to claim support payments. It is vital for the future acceptability of the CAP by the wider public that such arrangements are stopped," said Mr Bliss.
“The European Commission has not at this stage provided a definition of ‘active farmer’ but the TFA would take it to mean the individual who is in occupation of the land concerned, who is also taking the entrepreneurial or business risk from the farm activities on the holding and has the managerial input for those activities," said Mr Bliss.
"Using this definition we would not expect applicants to have to provide relevant documentation at the time of their applications to prove that they were active farmers but they must all understand that should there be inspections relating to their applications then only at that stage will they have to present sufficient proof that they were meeting the definition of active farmer,” said Mr Bliss.
"Whilst the definition would stop landlords with tenants from being able to access CAP support payments it would continue to allow access for landowners with properly constituted contract farming arrangements where they were both involved in the management of the farming activities and for which they were taking risk rather than simply accepting a fixed charge for the services provided," said Mr Bliss.