NFU sets out its stall for reform of CAP

THE forthcoming reform of the EU Common Agriculture Policy should take the farming industry closer to the market place, according to Peter Kendall, president of the NFU in England.

Speaking in Brussels at the launch of his organisation's policy paper on the CAP, Kendall said it must continue to steer farmers towards the market but it must also provide support to help them deal with the shocks posed by volatility.

He spoke of the dairy crisis in 2009 as an example of how intervention could still play an important role in knocking out the worst fluctuations.

He said: "Intervention should be able to be deployed as a last resort designed to prevent market collapse following a serious deterioration in prices."

This was very different to the 1980s, where stocks built up under normal market conditions.

Kendall also warned of the dangers of "renationalisation" of the CAP, with member states being allowed to set their own regulations and even to help co-finance schemes that would benefit their own farmers.

"This would be a disaster for European agriculture and totally negate the many positives that the CAP has brought to EU farmers and society," he said.

"We want a policy … that is focussed on farmers and farming activity, that is common in its funding and mechanisms."

Kendall put food production at the heart of the new policy, saying: "Agriculture is central to many of the challenges faced by the EU from improving the security of energy supply to tackling climate change, but above all we need a policy to ensure that consumers in the EU and beyond had a secure and sustainable supply of food produced to high standards.

"We'd all like to get to a place where we can be much less reliant on CAP support, but to achieve this requires a number of conditions to be met. Until then, a strong CAP remains essential."

Among the conditions which the English NFU would like to see are greater efforts in food promotion.

The NFU policy document also states it wants to see a refocusing of rural development programmes, and a simplification to make it more coherent. It accuses this part of the CAP of having "lost its way and become a dumping ground for a range of policy objectives".

Up until now much of the funding for this part of the CAP has come from top slicing the cash paid to farmers, but Kendall said he wanted this to change.

Echoing the Scottish view, the English NFU document calls for support to go to active farmers, saying that the European Commission should ensure payments go to those who are farming the land, rather than just owning property.