Farmers in Environmental Stewardship schemes and countryside organisations have called on the Prime Minister to protect grants for wildlife and environmental protection projects in budget talks taking place later this week. The upcoming talks will impact on Common Agricultural Policy reform.

image expired

Farmers and wildlife organisations, led in the UK by the RSPB, have called on the government to preserve CAP spending on agri-environment schemes, which they fear may suffer if proposals for swingeing budget cuts become a reality. There are also fears that EU spending cuts could hamper the implementation of changes designed to make the CAP more progressive and reduce the impact of farming on the environment.

The RSPB last week launched a campaign to protect spending on rural schemes which aim to provide environmental benefits and which often provide an extra source of income for conscientious farmers.

In addition to concerns about spending on agri-environment schemes, experts, environmental groups and sustainably-minded farmers have warned that proposed 'greening measures,' designed to make the CAP spending on direct payments more acceptable to the European Public, are being diluted and may also be hit by budget cuts. In meetings over the summer, MEPs and agriculture ministers attempted to limit the 'greening' aspects of reforms, under pressure from the industrial farming lobby.

Their drive to do so has been exacerbated by the effects of crisis in the Eurozone and the results of extreme weather in many of the world’s breadbasket regions; events which have shifted discourse away from long-term sustainability and onto boosting production and generating money.  

European farming union Copa Cogeca has said the Commission CAP proposals released in October 2011, which introduced greening measures including making 30 percent of direct payments dependent on farmers fulfilling certain environmental criteria and making sure buffer strips, fallow land and hedges account for at least 7 percent of farmland to support wildlife, are too cumbersome and rigid to work. The organisation has said reforms must concentrate on maximising production and profitability.

The EU Council will meet on Thursday (22nd November) in Brussels to begin negotiations on the next EU budget. Once this is decided, the European Parliament will begin negotiations on the breakdown of the CAP, though farm reform negotiations were subject to further delays at the beginning of the month.

MEPs said the latest three-month delay in negotiations is the result of continued discord in EU budget negotiations. The delay makes the possibility that the reformed CAP will be implemented by 2014 extremely remote. In the UK, the NFU suggested this may impact farmers whose ES schemes come to an end in 2014.   

However, a coalition formed of environmental organisations from across Europe has warned that, as biodiversity losses and environmental impact of farming in Europe are beginning to be more widely understood, as is the need to plan for and mitigate the effects of climate change, greening considerations should be of utmost importance in upcoming debates.

In a statement made at the beginning of the month, the No More Black Cheques coalition, comprised of Birdlife International, European Environmental Bureau and WWF amongst others, said "Close to 40 percent of the total EU Budget subsidises farming; a hefty sum that supports a largely industrialised agriculture and is unfairly distributed. The original reform objective was to use the money more wisely to ensure Europe’s farmers are supported when preserving and restoring the environment, and guaranteeing prosperity for hard pressed rural communities. But this hope is fading."

The group warned that commitments by the EU heads of state arising from this week's council meeting will "be made without even knowing how 'green and fair' their Agriculture Ministers and the European Parliament will make the future CAP."  No More Black Cheques continued, "At this stage there is a serious threat that once the financial commitment is made, any meaningful and progressive environmental measures will be stripped away, due to limited resources."

Mark Robins, an RSPB spokesperson, told ITV on Tuesday (20th November) that such cuts would transform fragile areas in the UK, where the threatened payments account for a significant proportion of farmers' incomes and help to support a thriving tourist industry. He said, "Let's think about the South-West Uplands, Dartmoor, Exmoor and Bodmin Moor where those environmental payments to farmers there make up a significant part of their income… budget cuts will cut the legs off the kind of farming that makes the West Country so different."

Tweet