CLA position on the post-2013 CAP

5 February 2010

CLA president, William Worsley, talked exclusively to Farmers Guardian about his organisation’s vision for reforming the Common Agricultural Policy after 2013.

The CLA believes it has to make the strongest possible case for maintaining the size of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget upon which so many farmers in the UK and on the European mainland depend.

There are two levels and audiences in this debate. First is the general debate on the EU budget and position of the CAP within it, which must involve the general public and European decision-makers.

Second is the specific debate about the CAP itself, the fate of single payments and the balance between the CAP instruments. This principally concerns farmers. Since 2007, the CLA has focused on the former debate.

With the world economy in its current state, those of us who recognise the countryside needs to be paid for, have to make the case for it. Nobody else will.

Little support

We may not get much support from British political parties. As yet, none is arguing the budget should be preserved. Some suggest agricultural policy should be set at national level, putting British farmers at a disadvantage compared with their European competitors.

All this comes at a time when farming is under considerable pressure. We may need to produce more food, and society is demanding ever higher environmental standards.

The farming organisations acting alone are unlikely to make much headway in this political and economic climate. To be listened to, we need allies.

Thankfully, we have them.

Many conservation groups recognise the massive contribution farmers and other rural land managers make to the natural environment as an adjunct to their businesses, and are willing to join us in arguing at European level why farmers need to be paid for it.

An alliance of mainstream farming organisations and mainstream conservation groups, arguing that farmers need continued support from the European budget to produce both the food and the environment we want, is likely to achieve far more than any one group acting alone.

We propose the CAP has the following elements:

Policies to promote agricultural productivity and competitiveness
A basic decoupled payment scheme
Tiered agri-environment schemes
Ways of supporting marginal areas, and measures to promote wider rural development.

It is too early to spell out the detail. This is the stuff of the debate of the next three years.

The CLA takes a long view. Its objective is a viable and competitive agriculture providing a mixture of food, fibre, fuel, fauna, flora, fixation of carbon, filtration of water, farmed landscapes and heritage, and fun.

The market can provide several of these, but policy measures must be in place to ensure delivery of public goods where the market fails us.