CAP 2021: "Fit, fair and sustainable"
The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy needs a drastic reform
Photo: Helge May
Intensification of land use, factory farming, increasing use of pesticides and over-fertilization has led to massive problems for biodiversity and habitats, as well as to damage to water, soil and climate. The CAP has a great responsibility for this development.
Currently about 40 percent of the EU budget, annually around 60 billion EUR, are spent on agriculture. This public support is mainly organised as untargeted area-based payments – without specific goods and services provided by the recipients in return. NABU thinks this approach is counterproductive and inefficient: in its current form the CAP is equipped neither to address the unprofitability of small-scale farming, nor to meet the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. On the contrary, while not offering sufficient incentives for environmentally sound land use it promotes increasingly intensive use of agricultural land.
NABU has commissioned a study carried out by agroeconomists and agroecologists who developed a new model for agricultural payments that would meet the needs of both sustainably operating farmers and nature conservation. The study was launched at two events in November 2016 in Berlin and Brussels.
Stronger incentives for ecologically sound land use
"Fit, fair and sustainable- The EU’s Common Agricultural Policy needs a drastic reform"
Such a reform could make the CAP not only more compatible with the EU’s environmental objectives but also far fairer towards farmers and taxpayers.
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