Clarity and certainty needed in Cap reform
Consider the position of dairy farmers, for whom a 50% increase in milk production is targeted by 2020.
For these farmers, everything is built around the grazing platform, the land for cows within range of the milking parlour.
Since 2006, the requirements of the EU’s Nitrates Directive, designed to protect water quality, have set even lower limits on the grazing platform.
Top dairy farmers manage by carrying nearly four cows per hectare.
Renting about one third of the land they farm has also helped Irish dairy farmers overcome grazing platform limitations, but many find it hard to get their hands on extra land.
And it got even harder when the European Commission proposed to eliminate existing single farm payment entitlements, and re-allocate them based on eligible hectares farmed in 2014.
This CAP reform proposal provoked major protest in Ireland, at the prospect of landowners pulling back land from the rental or leasing market, so they could get entitlements attached to it in 2014.
According to ICMSA President John Comer, the resulting massive disruption in the land rental market, and problems for farmers actively farming rented land, are set to get even worse.
*Why does ICMSA believe 2015 or possibly 2016 will become the base year rather than the proposed 2014?
>>Commissioner Ciolos has confirmed what everyone already knows, which is that even if a new CAP was ‘signed-off’ tomorrow, it would be practically impossible to have that plan sent out to all 27 member states and individual implementation plans returned and accepted by the Commission before 2014. ICMSA feels at this juncture that 2015 looks like the earliest possible date.
The important thing here is that we all move beyond vague aspirations, and start nailing down what can be achieved for certain.
Commissioner Ciolos needs to set out the sequence and timetable to which the process will operate.
The threat here is the continuing uncertainty that makes a year-on-year planned operation like farming — particularly, dairy farming — downright impossible.
Let’s have all the suppositions and aspirations put to one side, and a real workable timetable outlined and worked on
*How will a 2015 or 2016 base year makes things worse?
>>Very simple.
The longer the run-in to the fixing of a base year, the more distorted the land rental market will become.
That market is already seeing the effects, as landowners refuse to renew the land leased and needed by active farmers, in the hope that any new single payment system will favour the owners, as opposed to the people actually farming the land and earning their living off the land. The longer the run-in, the more likely the distorting effect of that speculation will increase.
*The average entitlement in Ireland is about €70 per eligible hectare, ICMSA wants payments targeted to those farming the land by using a retrospective base year. Would more Irish landowners lose than gain as a result?
>>With respect to landowners, ICMSA represents active farmers.
Whether more or less Irish landowners gain or lose is a secondary consideration.
The much more important question is whether active, full-time farmers gain or lose as a result of the fixing of a base year.
CAP was not — and in our opinion, never should be — a system designed to pay funds to landowners.
CAP was — and must continue to be — a system designed to pay the producers of the EU’s food for the massive costs of meeting the highest environmental and regulatory standards on the planet, and producing excellent food of the highest quality, at the prices that enable the EU’s populations to buy and consume. The premium must go to the person producing the food, that is, the farmer and not the person who owns the asset, which is the land.
*Have you any examples of how the proposed new base year is affecting dairy farmers?
>>Many of our dairy farmers are finding it increasingly difficult to get their hands on critical extra land so that they can expand grazing within range of the milking parlour, while obeying the requirements of the EU’s Nitrates Directive, which has set lower limits on stocking rates.
Major CAP reform is coming and by definition, that brings a degree of uncertainty, but ICMSA certainly feels that the lack of clarity is being compounded by confusion over the base year.
It is our opinion that unless and until some clarity is brought to this question, we will see a steady erosion of the certainty that is most definitely required if we’re to realize the Food Harvest 2020 ambitions.
