NFU position on the post-2013 CAP

IT’S important that all those with an interest in the CAP, especially farmers, have their say on the shape of the policy after 2013, which is why the NFU has embarked on a major consultation of its members.

Our emerging thinking sees the CAP first and foremost as an agricultural and food policy.

It is telling that the recently-adopted Lisbon Treaty upholds the original objectives of the policy, to increase agricultural productivity, ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, stabilise markets, and ensures the availability of supplies to consumers at affordable prices.

Our initial view is that future policy must meet four clear principles:

• It must be simple, rather than tied-up in constraints and bureaucracy. This applies for both beneficiaries and paying agencies
• The policy should be focused on the market - seeking to make it function better rather than distorting it with coupled supports or other interventions which could impede fair competition between farmers in different member states
• It should seek to improve agriculture’s productivity and not impede its competitiveness, and
• These principles are all best secured through a common policy - that has common instruments, common funding and critically without further re-nationalisation or co-funding of support by national governments.

The reason the CAP exists is to correct the failure in the market to deliver profitable returns to farmers. While the reforms of recent years have helped to address this through the provision of decoupled payments, there is considerable work to do so farmers can profit sufficiently from the market.

Going forward, food commodity markets are likely to be more volatile. Trade liberalisation will place even greater market pressure on some sectors. These trends will demand the retention of policy tools to avoid the erosion of European productive capacity.

Meeting demand

Decoupled payments should be paid to active farmers in order to help them manage these risks and help to ensure the EU as a whole can sustain its ability to meet growing demand for food within and outside of its borders.

Of course, it is vital the agricultural sector is increasingly sustainable, economically, socially and environmentally. Agri-environmental schemes are already helping in improving the environmental performance of agriculture, leading to a much more environmentally focused sector. But the real challenge of the next period of reform will be to assist farmers to become more competitive and more productive.

To achieve a successful outcome for British farmers and growers, we will need to engage pragmatically and enthusiastically with farming organisations and governments in other member states as well as convince our own Government, of whichever part, to come away from the ideologically entrenched views of the past.

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