In an opinion on support for young farmers that was adopted on Thursday 9 February, the Committee of the Regions (CoR) called for action to address land grabbing.
The shortage of land to buy or to rent is the biggest problem facing young farmers and new entrants into farming, notes the CoR in an opinion drafted by Arnold Hatch (ECR, UK), member of Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon Council in Northern Ireland.
The European Commission has only a very limited scope of action to intervene in land market legislation. The CoR suggests, however: - promoting the use of the possibilities under rural development to support the new actions to foster land mobility; - broadening the scope of the support initiatives to new farm business models (in particular, innovative types of partnerships among farmers); - encouraging more active national policies with EU recommendations on access to land with best practices.
The CoR notes that, in the EU, only about 6% of all people in charge of farms are under 35 years old, while more than half are aged over 55. It says that the shortage of young people pursuing careers in agriculture “threatens the economic and social viability of rural areas”. It urges member states to make use of the possibilities provided under the new common agricultural policy (CAP) to support young farmers and generational renewal.
“Young people are drifting away from farming and the countryside to our urban areas. Today around 72% of citizens in the EU live in urban areas and this figure is expected to rise to more than 90% in several countries by 2020”, Hatch stated. CoR rapporteur on the future of the CAP after 2020, Guillaume Cros (PES, France), who is the vice-president of the Regional Council of Occitanie, called on the Commission to increase financial support for rural development, which has dropped from 32.6% of the EU’s structural funds budget in 2007-13 to 21.3% for 2014-20. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)