Smith lobbies EU agriculture commissioner on future of CAP

SERIOUS lobbying has been done at the highest levels in Brussels this week on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy.

Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Minister Brendan Smith met with the new EU Agriculture Commissioner, Dacian Ciolos, on the fringes of a Council of Ministers meeting.

Mr Smith said he stressed to Commissioner Ciolos the need for a robust and properly funded CAP after 2013, based on the twin goals of competitiveness and sustainability.

“I repeated our commitment to decoupled payments. These income supports, provided by the single payment scheme, are of vital importance for the continuation of sustainable farming in Ireland,” he said.

Mr Smith also raised the issue of market management measures, which he said have proven to be essential in addressing price volatility and will continue to have a value post-2013.

Mr Smith said the dairy situation needs to be nurtured carefully and requires a stock policy that is cautious and sensitive to the vagaries of the market.

Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association president Jackie Cahill said Mr Smith was perfectly right to emphasise the need for the careful release of stocks built up through the operation of intervention measures during last year’s dairy price collapse.

Mr Cahill said the release of even relatively small volumes would undermine any tentative recovery in prices later this year, but not many dairy farmers would share the minister’s optimism such a recovery was either likely or possible. The underlying causes of last year’s collapse had not been addressed and there was no signal from either the Commission or the department that they understood what had gone wrong and why the collapse had occurred.

“Hopefully, the minister will realise that the kind of supply-management he’s calling for in the area of release of intervention stocks must be extended to the whole area of production, if stability and viability are ever to be restored to Irish milk prices,” he said.

Irish Farmers Association president John Bryan also met with Research and Innovation Commissioner Maire Geoghegan Quinn in Brussels. He said he used the opportunity to highlight the importance of the single farm payment to farmers and the vital role it plays in supporting the production of high quality food in an environmentally sustainable way.

Mr Bryan said farmers would be looking to Maire Geoghegan-Quinn to protect the national envelope for the single payment at the EU Commission table as it is to the economy, and farm families.