Deputy President Meurig Raymond met the MEPs in charge of amending the Commission's CAP proposals in Strasbourg this week. They included the agriculture committee chairman Paolo De Castro and lead CAP rapporteur, the Portuguese MEP Luis Manuel Capoulas Santos.

Mr Raymond said the policy must recognise greening efforts already underway on British farms and warned against measures which would hamper production and harm farm competitiveness.

He said: "Because MEPs are in charge of amending Commission proposals they have a wonderful opportunity to simplify the policy, to make it more market-orientated and to help farmers become more competitive.

"The Commission's impact assessment indicated greening will result in a 4.8 per cent cut in farm incomes and could push food prices higher through supply-side pressures. This is unacceptable, but the problems don't stop there.

"We fear greening could also undermine the Commission's environmental goals by discouraging farmers from entering into environmental schemes in Pillar 2. Currently 68 per cent of English farmland is managed in optional agri-environment schemes.

"We are encouraging MEPs to recognise the efforts that many farmers are already making in delivering environmental benefits through the CAP. If Pillar 1 greening measures cannot be deleted from the text, we've told MEPs they must be common at a European level, maintain our productive capacity and minimise cost and bureaucracy."

The NFU believes this is a crucial time to lobby MEPs. Mr Raymond added: "Over the next six months MEPs will write amendments to improve key areas of the regulation such as on greening. This is our chance to inject some common sense into CAP reform."

Background

CAP "Greening" Proposal - Pillar 1 payments

Under the new proposals "greening of the CAP" include three elements.

• Crop diversification where farmers with more than 3 Ha of arable land must have at least  3 crop types, but as yet these have not been defined. There are concerns that this will impact on livestock farmers who for instance only grow maize sillage. Small farmers will also struggle to meet this requirement whilst contract farm agreements could come unstuck if they have block cropping.

• Maintenance of permanent pastures as defined by any grass over five years old. The current CAP definition of permanent pasture is land used to grow grasses or other herbaceous forage natural (self-seeded) or through cultivation (sown) and that has not been included in the crop rotation of the holding for five years or longer (Article 2(c) of Commission Regulation 1120/2009). The arguement is that this does not distinguish between pasture that is truly permanent (rarely, if ever, cultivated or re-seeded and more likely to consist of seminatural vegetation) from that which is reseeded periodically. Livestock farms in the West of England may have long term leys in the rotation which would fall under the current restrictive definition for a permanent pasture.

• Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs). Seven percent of eligible area (excl. PP) managed for the environment, where hedges, ditches, ponds and field margins would count. EFAs draw on a Swiss policy in which farmers are paid a subsidy to dedicate a fixed percentage of the farm land to an environmental use rather than agricultural production. However, the introduction of payments for the Group 1 and 2 green measures would have implications for the suite of standards of Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) that are in place in Member States, as a number of these overlap either partially of wholly with a number of existing GAEC standards. This is particularly the case with the options relating to soil cover and permanent pasture as well as some of the management actions that may count towards ecological set-aside.

Currently the CAP is composed of two pillars. Pillar 1 entails a Common Market Organisation (CMO), which lays out rules for providing 'Market Price Support' measures as well as the single payment scheme. Pillar 2 or Rural Development Regulation (RDR) of Agenda 2000, includes a list of available measures from which member states can choose.

Total CAP expenditures were around 53 billion euros in 2010. Pillar 1 funds come from the European Agricultural Guarentee Fund (EAGF) and accounted for 80% of all CAP expenidture. Pillar 2 funds come from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) - source OECD.

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