CAP health check to rid EU of 'pseudo-farmers'

The EU’s agriculture chief has said that it’s time to get rid of Europe’s “pseudo-farmers” and concentrate on the real business of agriculture.

In her so-called health check of the common agricultural policy, Mariann Fischer Boel said, “If you have a goat in your back garden, you’re not a farmer.”

The CAP briefing on Tuesday kicks off a six-month discussion period, intended to streamline and further modernise reforms that were first introduced in 2003. 

The check aims to take into account changing circumstances, such as an enlarged EU and the challenges posed by climate change and rising food prices.

But according to the head of the parliament’s agriculture committee, Neil Parish, the commissioner has not gone far enough in earmarking CAP savings for improved environmental performance.

“These proposals are not nearly as radical as I would have liked,” he said.

“Not enough is being done to fight overzealous regulation and I would like to see more money moved from direct payments into environmental schemes.

“Further reform of the CAP is needed to bring it up to date with the trials we face in the 21st century.”

The Danish commissioner has set out a review of the single payments scheme, first introduced under the 2003 reforms, in a bid to make it more “effective, efficient and simple”.

A major proposal is set to increase the rate of ‘modulation’, whereby direct payments to large farmers will be reduced and the money saved transferred to the rural development budget.

The commission also suggests gradually reducing direct payments to farmers as their overall levels of support rise, and setting a higher minimum amount of land that a farmer must own before qualifying for EU money.

Reports last week that the single payments scheme is being used to line the coffers of large landowners in the UK were strenuously denied by the commissioner.

“We don’t support golf courses!” she said, after being questioned about the 2006 court of auditors report, which found that side-effects of the scheme allow entitlements to landowners who never exercised previous agricultural activity.

Fischer Boel was adamant that the payments scheme is not used to pay landowners rather than farmers. She said that if by any accident a golf course was paid out of the scheme, then it is an error that will be caught.

Speaking after the briefing, Scottish MEP Alyn Smith tentatively welcomed the proposed CAP reforms. “Everyone would agree that the CAP can be made better, and these solid, even modest, proposals will take that much-needed reform closer.

“The package is in the main sensible, and it is safe to say that the agriculture committee will give them a fair wind.

“The increase in compulsory modulation is in particular to be welcomed, as this has put Scots farmers at a disadvantage to their EU competition. The commission acting to put the whole of the EU onto a level playing field is a step which all Scots farmers will welcome.”

The commissioner also responded to calls to address the rise in food prices by warning that eliminating import duties and set-aside might not stem the rise.

“All the price increases we have seen this year have come from historic low levels. It is labour and transport costs that have risen, but the basic price for agricultural commodities has actually fallen.”

The European environmental bureau expressed its disappointment about the “weak sign of the commission’s intention to use this health check as an opportunity to turn the CAP into a more effective instrument for improving the environmental performance of farming”.

Final legislative proposals for the CAP reforms will be unveiled next spring and adopted by EU agriculture ministers before the end of 2008.

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