What do young farmers want from CAP reform? In this email interview, Alessia Musumarra, Secretary General of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), acknowledges some wins in the European Parliament, identifies where more ambition is needed, and lays out what CEJA hopes to see from the trilogues. […]
Ukraine is a major agricultural exporter to the European Union. A progressive CAP could force Ukrainian agriculture towards more sustainability. But the current nationalization of the CAP might steer such environmental ambitions off course. […]
The European Commission has initiated the process of building a vision for rural Europe for 2040. But to be genuinely valuable, a visioning exercise should look no further than the near future. ARC2020 president Hannes Lorenzen envisions the next seven years, looking ahead to 2027 before bringing us back to 2021 and the present day. […]
In the aftermath of the European Parliament’s adopted position, we analyse the adopted amendments in relation to the various aspects more relevant to rural development: financial allocation, flexibility between funds, LEADER, Smart Villages, environmental spending, organic farming, decentralization of delivery mechanism, etc. […]
This article examines some weaknesses of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Central America in the context of the EU Common Agricultural Policy reform post 2020. The specific focus is on the ‘Special Treatment on Bananas’ conceded to Honduras and its interlinkages with the Common Market Organisation (CMO). […]
Can a cash-strapped EU afford to lock itself into a dysfunctional agricultural policy? In the wake of the new positions on CAP reform agreed by the Council and European Parliament last week, Sebastian Lakner unpacks some crucial elements – and finds a lack of vision, ambition and courage. […]
The post 2020 reform promised to deliver a fairer CAP: better targeting and distribution of resources. At the core of a fairer CAP, the Commission introduced mandatory capping – upper limits to payments – and degressivity – progressive reduction of payments above a certain level – to address a skewed distribution of around 80% of direct payments to only 20% of European farms. […]
In Europe’s killing fields, the biggest driver of insect decline is monoculture-dominated and pesticide-reliant industrial agriculture. The EU should channel the billions it spends on CAP to support climate- and insect-friendly farming practices, argue Sandra Bell, Barbara Unmüßig and Jagoda Munić. […]
With big farms gobbling up nearly half of the CAP pie, direct payments are exacerbating income inequality among farmers – whilst fuelling the destruction of the very environment upon which farming depends, finds a new study by Murray Scown, Kimberly Nicholas and Mark Brady. […]
Pollinators secure our food supply, but Europe’s wild pollinators are being wiped out by intensive agriculture and the use of pesticides and fertilisers. In the latest in a series of damning reports, the European Court of Auditors accuses the Commission of failing ailing pollinator populations. Louise Kelleher reports. […]
With farms increasingly forced to go big or go broke, corporate interests are stepping in to shape agriculture. More transparency, participative decision-making, and CAP reform are among the tools that can be leveraged to combat the scourge of financialisation, write Robert Levesque, Tanguy Martin and Véronique Rioufol. […]
Big Dairy’s greenhouse gas emissions are increasing, but the corporations responsible are not being held to account. Meanwhile consolidation in the dairy industry is squeezing smaller operators and hurting rural communities. It’s time to hold agribusiness accountable for its climate footprint, argues Shefali Sharma in a new report from the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy. […]
Brittany’s sustainable farmers have breathed a collective sigh of relief as further funding is secured for the agroecological transition. But while the region makes the most of CAP Pillar 2, the French state continues to prop up factory farms with Pillar 1. Louise Kelleher has more. […]
Toilet paper was at a premium, wine was scarce, but the Covid-19 crisis was not a threat to food security. Meanwhile a more insidious threat persists beyond the pandemic, as CAP payments – intended to buy food security for the EU – continue to sponsor the destruction of the environment in which our food grows. It’s time to dump the food security narrative, argue Guy Pe’er and Sebastian Lakner. […]
The agriculture section of the EU Green Deal is plagued with contradictions. On the plus side, it finally acknowledges the need to massively develop agroecology. But Farm to Fork advocates for a range of false solutions, including so-called “carbon farming”. All agricultural models cannot coexist, argue Manon Castagné and François Delvaux in this op-ed. […]
Agricultural and Rural Convention