CAP: Who and what is it for? 

Very recently, the ICMSA advanced our definition of what should constitute an ‘active farmer’. We think that the most practical way of defining that must be via stocking rates, and we have deliberately advanced a definition that has an active farmer as someone with a stocking rate of at least one livestock unit (LU) per hectare (ha). It’s fair to say that our definition has not been met with universal welcome, and we are always interested in hearing countering arguments – some will be valid, some will not. But we will listen respectfully and then respond. The only precondition we would ask people to note before they make a judgement on our definition is that they go back and see who and what Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was set up for.

The journey

If everything is a journey – and CAP certainly is – then it’s vital to know from what point the journey began and for what purposes. CAP was designed to bridge the gap between what the populations of the great European cities wanted to pay for their food and what the producers of that food the farmers, required in order to continue producing that food. In the decades after 1945, there was massive migration to the ruined cities that needed to be rebuilt and there was a recognition on the part of individual governments and the early EEC that getting adequate amounts of food into those cities at affordable prices was the indispensable element. CAP was invented to establish food security and to bridge the gap between the ‘cheap food’ policy at retail level and the real costs of producing that food and keeping sufficient farmers on the land to keep the food going into the cities. That’s not a matter of opinion or interpretation; it’s a matter of historical record.

Stumbling blocks

For just so long as that original purpose and understanding was accepted and acted on, CAP functioned. The problems began – and again, this is a matter of record – when the EU decided that the handiest way of introducing environmental, biodiversity and sustainability targets and restrictions was via CAP. What followed – and is still ongoing – was clumsy policy ‘bolt-ons’ and ‘retrofitting’ that effectively cancelled out the original purpose and mechanism and has left the EU floundering on affordable and sustainable indigenous food production and attaining emissions-lowering targets. CAP was a special purpose vehicle designed to support food producers and ‘top up’ their income through direct supports in order for high quality food to be made available to urban and suburban populations at affordable prices. As the environmental ‘bolt-on’ requirements were added, its effectiveness in meeting that original aim has declined and become degraded to the point of non-existence. The irony here is that the 'green' lobby would argue that it isn’t working for them either and they, too, see that CAP is falling between two stools: support for food production and attaining environmental targets. It isn’t fulfilling either function and is falling short on both.

Direction

The ICMSA’s response to that dilemma is very simple. We were here first! The CAP was designed for the farmers producing the food that fed those original urban and suburban populations. That was its original purpose, and that is still the purpose for which it is most suitable. In fact, and considering the highly combustive and uncertain international political situation, we might need to ‘double-down’ on our own internal EU capacity to feed ourselves. The time for dancing around these issues is gone. The ICMSA does not intend to waste time trying to square a circle that can never be achieved. CAP must revert to being a fund that supports food producers through meaningful direct payments and if the EU wants to support people to achieve environmental aims and ambitions then they should introduce a CEP – a Common Environmental Policy – and fund that separately.
The idea that someone with a few beehives and a herd of goats is a ‘farmer’ in the same sense that someone milking a herd of cows twice daily and back-boning a hugely valuable food resource and export is a fiction and it’s a fiction that ICMSA doesn’t think we should be peddling anymore.