Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is wrong in so many ways. But how the British farm is pivotal to climate change, obesity and rural poverty. If the British wind down EU farm policy, as the UK government wants, they ditch some powerful tools to help tackle these problems. Without the CAP, or something like it, the British may well grow biofuels at the cost of biodiversity, exporting their pollution and opening EU markets in ways poorer countries cannot exploit. In short, the British risk botching the job.
That is why, this autumn, as Brussels steels itself for a fresh bout of wrangling over the policy, the CAP’s harshest critics aren’t simply trying to demolish it. Health, poverty and environmental campaigners want the EU to spend better, not less.
“What we really need is not to scrap the CAP,” explains Tim Marsh from the UK’s National Heart Forum, “but to reinvent it from first principles.” Marsh argues that money now spent on direct payments to farmers should be used to make fruit and vegetables cheaper.
Only in four EU countries do people eat as much fruit and vegetables as the WHO recommends. Marsh points to research in Canada showing that subsidising even a one per cent cut in the price of fruit and vegetables could boost consumption enough to prevent thousands of strokes and heart attacks. The study put the cost per life saved at around a million euros, which compares well with many government health programmes.
Climate campaigners tell a similar story. “The CAP needs to be climate-proofed so that it supports farming systems which minimise greenhouse gas emissions,” says Harry Huyton from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Livestock farming and fertiliser are the big polluters. The UN says livestock account nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, when you count in feed, transport and processing.
We need stronger environmental standards to tackle this, including on emissions, but without providing support as well the British will just shift pollution abroad. EU meat production is falling but their appetite is on the up, from 87 kg on average each in 2004 to 89 kg projected for 2012. The CAP should help producers convert to sustainable farming and market greener products, not just as a niche but as the norm.
The toughest thing is to do all this fairly. Development groups have mostly focused on making the CAP less unfair, tackling the barriers it puts in the way of imports from poorer countries and the boost it gives EU exports. They still want that, but more too.
“Europe must stop taking with one hand what it gives with the other,” says Teresa Cavero from the Spanish branch of Oxfam. This means investing heavily in poorer countries from CAP funds — putting our money were our mouth is on international development. It is in the British mutual interest to help them meet high standards, for example on emissions, and to build markets that are economically and ecologically sustainable.
So that leaves consumers, climate change and producers in poorer countries all needing a bigger slice of the pie. But let’s not forget rural communities in Europe too. People who live in the countryside but don’t farm are meant to benefit from the CAP, and rightly so, but barely see a crumb.
One reason the British don’t hear more complaint is that rural communities are poorly represented. Unlike farmers and even environmental groups, they have no big teams to make their case in Brussels. So, according to Neil Ward, director of the Centre for Rural Economy, one priority is simply to invest in civil society so rural people, particularly the rural poor, get a louder voice.
Reform used to be about making the CAP less bad for the British. Now, it seems, the CAP could even be a good thing. But one thing won’t change: the CAP is never going to come cheap.