CAPs anyone?

Thought we'd keep with the farming theme this week.  So.....

CAP is the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union (EU) which is followed by a number of countries in Europe, including Great Britain.  It has two objectives; to ensure that farmers get a fair standard of living, and to ensure that there is a stable safe supply of food for consumers that is at an affordable price.  The priorities of CAP has changed over the years, but since 2012 the priorities are viable food production, sustainable management of natural resources and the balanced development of rural areas in the EU.  70% of the budget available to CAP is put towards supporting farmers.  However, this is only available to them if they follow the strict standards for food safety, environmental protection, and animal wellbeing and health.

Why is this Policy important to the environment? With 44% of Europe (and around 70% of United Kingdom) given over to agriculture, how this land is managed will have a significant affect on a number of environmental issues, such as biodiversity collpase and stopping (or adapting to, though hopefully we won't get to that) climate change.  There are also more human and immediate issues to worry about, such as ensuring the continue supply of clean water resources and maintaining healthy populations of pollinating insects.

This year, the Members of the European Parliament will be voting on the new framework which will start in 2014, and this year there's meant to be a 'radical' reform of the CAP.  The prelimanry voting took place in the middle of March, where initial decisions on how CAP is going to carry on the future has already occurred.  But these discussions will carry on until the end of June 2013, which does seem an pretty long time, but does still give us time to push for the direction we feel is important to us.

So, what's happened so far?
Let's start with the couple of good point (and yes I'm afraid I only have two good point here).  This is that the MEPs have voted to stop the double fundung of farmers for doing the same activities.  This may seem like a strange thing to be doing, but if a specific act is required in different criteria for funding, and there is no cross compliance, this can occur.  They also voted that any farmers who brake the law, such as the use of hormones and issues with poolution, will loss their subsidies.  This should reduce the number of farmers who still behave in this way.

And now for the not so good stuff.  While the MEPs voted to give Member States more flexibility on their agriculture policies, they didn't vote for the agri-environmental-climate measures and certification scheme that was meant to go along with this flexibility.  The MEPs did vote for farmers having to operate in a wildlife friendly manner to get 30% of their payments, but, in true style, have watered down the requirements and delayed when these changes are to occur.  Environmental groups where hoping that the subsidies would require that 10% of farmland would be put aside for wildlife, but here again the MEPs have voted for a watered down version.  They have voted for only 3% of land to be put aside, which will side gradually, but only to possibly 7% as the final figure.  There was also a chance for them to vote for connecting the Water Framework Directive and Birds and Habitats Directive to the subsidies, which would mean that farmers would have to follow these instead of it being a voluntary action.  Unfortunately, the MEPs did not vote for this.  The problem here is not only an issue with protecting our water sources for us, but would also mean that we would be protecting some of the most important land in the fight against climate change......our carbon rich bogs and peat lands.

The outcome could have been distinctly worse!  There were a lot of proposals that would have undermined the CAP becoming green but there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure that the most important industry in our world has a positive affect on our world. 

On a side note, in my research on this I find out something very disturbing.  Some of the subsidies that our taxes pay for goes to tobacco farmers! I'm sorry what?  That is wrong on so many levels, especially as there is a huge effort being made to stop people smoking.  You can't tell me they couldn't grow something a little less killing on that land.