IRL claims the CAP needs to be reshaped for resilient rural sector

THE Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) must be re-shaped in order to diversify and build a truly resilient rural economy.

Irish Rural Link (IRL), the national network campaigning for sustainable rural communities, made the call in a submission to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (DAFF) on the shape of the CAP after 2013. “In future, the focus of the CAP must be on developing opportunities for off-farm working, for part-time farmers, the children of farmers and for the rural population who are not involved in farming.

“The real weakness of the current CAP is the less than satisfactory resources available to the wider rural community,” IRL said. The submission argues future rural funding programmes must be much more sector neutral and must focus on job creation and the long-term sustainability the rural economy instead of subsidising declining sectors.

It quotes EU Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel as saying the CAP is one of the main policy tools with which to confront the challenges of climate change and water management, as well as to seize the potential of renewable energy. IRL said it is not convinced such broad thinking is adequately reflected in the documentation DAFF has circulated as part of its consultation process which it said focuses too narrowly on trying to maintain the status quo.

IRL identified five key rural challenges which must, it said, guide the CAP in the future. These include the low skills base of many of those working part-time in agriculture and of those leaving the farming sector and the need for Irish farmers to diversify into new land-based enterprises which are less dependent on direct supports.

The other challenges are enhancing the role that agriculture can play in a more dynamic rural economy, supporting rural communities as key economic and social drivers and meeting the changes required to deal with climate change.

Noting a reduction in the number of rural dwellers working in farming, IRL said only one in five (21.5%) of the working population of rural areas, according to the 2006 Census, is working in agriculture (as a farmer or agriculture worker), a decline from one in three in 2002.