CAP reforms will aid land owners and not food producers, claims IFA

PROPOSALS to reform the CAP will reward land owners rather than food producers, the IFA has told EU Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos at a meeting in the European Parliament in Brussels.

While the EU’s current Single Farm Payment (SFP) is paid in relation to farm output, the new CAP proposes moving to a model of paying per hectare owned, even land which is not actively farmed. Farmers in Ireland and several other EU member states are fundamentally opposed to this proposal.

IFA president John Bryan told Mr Ciolos that Irish farmers have serious concerns that the Commission proposals have the capacity to undermine active producers, interfere with the farmer’s normal business decisions and, at a national level, reduce the capacity of Irish agriculture to contribute to our much needed economic recovery.