The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) called once again on Wednesday 6 September for a bold overhaul of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which would mean an end to the two-pillar approach (direct aid and market spending, and rural development).
“Farmers’ current dependence on subsidies stifles innovation by inhibiting the necessary diversification measures that are required to make our food system more sustainable and failing to promote alternatives to conventional cropping systems”, says the NGO in setting out its position of CAP reform (see EUROPE 11786). The EEB points out, too, that the majority of EU farmland is in the hands of a small number of farmers and “the trend towards every increasing concentration of the land in the hands of an ever smaller number of people continues”.
The food and farming policy of tomorrow starts with a new set of building blocks, says the EEB: a new policy structure, the implementation of the polluter pays principle and the inclusion of consumption in agricultural policy.
The NGO says the policy should be made up of four new instruments: - protection and enhancement of biodiversity and ecosystems (safeguarding a sufficient percentage of future policy budget for efficient and results-based measures); - sustainable rural development; - sustainable and healthy consumption (healthy food with a focus on healthy diets and cutting food waste); - transition to sustainable farming (helping EU farms become resource efficient, low carbon, ecologically sound, sustainable and resilient undertakings).
The EEB says that only by moving away from the existing two-pillar structure and defining a new contract between farmers and the whole of society can the CAP of tomorrow enhance its practices. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)