‘EU vote is missed opportunity for greener farming’

Europe’s agri­cul­tur­al pol­i­cy must look after the envi­ron­ment. It is not just organ­i­sa­tions such as WWF that demand this, but increas­ing­ly Europe’s con­sumers too. They expect more than sim­ply the pro­vi­sion of food from a farm­ing sec­tor that annu­al­ly gob­bles up many bil­lions in EU sub­si­dies.

Sur­veys show that EU cit­i­zens would pre­fer their tax­es were used to pro­mote farm­ers who pro­duce healthy foods and con­tribute towards pre­serv­ing the envi­ron­ment, land­scapes and live­able rur­al areas.

Regret­tably, ear­li­er this month the major­i­ty of the Euro­pean Par­lia­ment adopt­ed a green-washed posi­tion on the Com­mon Agri­cul­ture Pol­i­cy (CAP) for the next sev­en years. Sim­i­lar­ly weak pro­pos­als were agreed upon by the 27 agri­cul­ture min­is­ters of the mem­ber states.

How did this sit­u­a­tion arise? The Agri­cul­ture Com­mis­sion­er Dacian Cioloş tried to give voice to Euro­peans’ sen­ti­ment in autumn 2011 when he set the broad direc­tion for the cur­rent reform of the EU’s Com­mon Agri­cul­tur­al Pol­i­cy (CAP). His argu­ment was sim­ple: if the CAP is to sur­vive, it needs strong sup­port from the pub­lic and to become a tool of con­ser­va­tion.

What is cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing in Europe’s fields is an insid­i­ous exploita­tion and waste of nat­ur­al resources

As soon as the Com­mis­sion­er stopped talk­ing, the agri­cul­ture lob­by start­ed to play on the fear of many politi­cians and farm­ers that the farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty will lose fund­ing – fund­ing that often is seen as a kind of EU-financed rent for the farmer’s land, with­out any mean­ing­ful con­di­tions attached.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when these envi­ron­men­tal rules came to a vote in the Euro­pean Parliament’s Agri­cul­ture Com­mit­tee, the best parts of the reforms, which would have guar­an­teed a sus­tain­able future pol­i­cy, were ripped out. Appar­ent­ly, many politi­cians were con­vinced envi­ron­men­tal­ly sound agri­cul­ture is moral­ly unac­cept­able because it threat­ens the food sup­plies of 500 mil­lion Euro­peans.

In fact, the oppo­site is true. What is cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing in Europe’s fields is an insid­i­ous exploita­tion and waste of nat­ur­al resources. A com­bi­na­tion of mar­ket fail­ures, the buy­ing behav­iour of EU cit­i­zens and anachro­nis­tic EU pol­i­cy force many farm­ers to max­imise short-term pro­duc­tion at the expense of long-term via­bil­i­ty, just to keep their heads above water. Many farm­ers give lit­tle con­sid­er­a­tion to long-term soil fer­til­i­ty, water avail­abil­i­ty or the ben­e­fits of bio­di­ver­si­ty.

About 13 per cent of soil is at risk of ero­sion. Sur­veys esti­mate that soil ero­sion costs £44 bil­lion across Europe each year. Birds that live in diverse land­scapes and are a good indi­ca­tor of bio­log­i­cal diver­si­ty are becom­ing increas­ing­ly rare. Pop­u­la­tions of bees and oth­er pol­li­nat­ing insects are reced­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and already threat­en agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion.

Around 100 mil­lion Euro­peans live in regions where ground water or sur­face water have been over-exploit­ed or are in a poor con­di­tion. Yet at least 70 per cent of fresh­wa­ter is used for agri­cul­ture. The con­cen­tra­tion of live­stock pro­duc­tion in ever larg­er barns results in manure being spread on small areas and thus a mas­sive nitro­gen sur­plus. One con­se­quence is that 20 per cent of the Baltic seabed is oxy­gen-free due to eutroph­i­ca­tion, which is an omi­nous sig­nal for fish­ing.

Europe large­ly offers excel­lent nat­ur­al con­di­tions for agri­cul­ture, but the EU must urgent­ly invest in the preser­va­tion of nat­ur­al cap­i­tal oth­er­wise farm­ers will no longer be able to feed Europe’s cit­i­zens. The pro­pos­al by Com­mis­sion­er Cioloş may not have ful­ly achieved a tru­ly sus­tain­able agri­cul­tur­al sys­tem in Europe, but it deserved sup­port as a com­pro­mise between envi­ron­men­tal and busi­ness inter­ests

Since the EU Par­lia­ment and Council’s posi­tions have been con­firmed, lit­tle hope remains that Mr Cioloş’ reform will sur­vive the tri­a­logue process between Coun­cil, Par­lia­ment and Com­mis­sion. Pre­sum­ably a new mech­a­nism will be cre­at­ed link­ing parts of direct pay­ments to envi­ron­men­tal mea­sures.

But the envi­ron­men­tal mea­sures will be full of excep­tions, tran­si­tion peri­ods and soft­ened require­ments. Should the tri­a­logue process fail to adopt more ambi­tious green­ing mea­sures, the next sev­en years of CAP can be seen as anoth­er missed oppor­tu­ni­ty to push Europe’s agri­cul­ture towards greater sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

It would have been in the inter­est of farm­ers and politi­cians to sup­port a green CAP to pro­tect nature and thus their long-term cap­i­tal. In return for £33 bil­lion a year in direct pay­ments, Euro­pean tax­pay­ers have the right to demand this ser­vice for soci­ety as a whole.

Matthias Meiss­ner is WWF leader on EU Com­mon Agri­cul­tur­al Pol­i­cy reform, with a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in glob­al food secu­ri­ty and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture. Before join­ing WWF Ger­many in 2008, he worked for oth­er non-gov­ern­men­tal organ­i­sa­tions on sus­tain­able farm­ing issues and pro­tec­tion of species.