We have a new Common Agricultural Policy. After two years of protracted negotiations, the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers last night reached an agreement on EU farm policy until 2020. The deal will need to be voted through by the EP and member states, but this is expected to be pretty much a rubber-stamping exercise, set to take place in the autumn.

In his statement on the deal, EU agriculture commissioner Dacian Ciolos hailed the deal as the start of a “fairer and greener” CAP – it features, for example, new ‘greening’ measures designed to encourage farmers to make greater use of environmentally friendly production methods.

You will know, from even the scantest look at how farming unions, environmental groups and various industry lobbying organisations have reacted to last night’s deal, that Ciolos’s claim the new CAP is “fairer and greener” isn’t universally shared.

Plans to phase out sugar quotas in 2017 have prompted some bitter cross-industry fighting, and in the UK specifically an almighty tiff has been brewing between Defra and the NFU, with the NFU Council warning the government’s plans for implementing the CAP would spell “catastrophe” for farmers in this country.

In a speech at the Dairy UK dinner last night, Defra farming minister David Heath highlighted the UK government’s work during the CAP negotiations, particularly in ensuring the EU didn’t regress back to the old days of ‘butter mountains’ and ‘wine lakes’ – but he acknowledged NFU president Peter Kendall (who was sitting roughly a metre away from him at the time) was likely to start throwing things at him if he spent too much time talking CAP. Proof, if anything, that even badger- and GM-induced honeymoons don’t last forever.

You wouldn’t expect an agricultural policy for 27 (soon 28) member states to be settled without someone somewhere getting upset, so I was more intrigued by Ciolos’s assertion that the new agreement would make the CAP “more transparent”. Greater transparency is, of course, relative, but we are talking about more than 1,000 pages of rather technically involved proposals on things like “modulation” and “greening” here.

It’s not exactly mainstream reading – which is a shame given agriculture spend will account for nearly 40% of the EU’s total budget. It’s not really in anyone’s interest to have a handful of CAP specialists with a PhD in EU-speak to have a virtual information monopoly on what we’ve all just committed to spending close to €400bn on.

As concerns about food security rise, we, the public, need to have access to the right tools and information to make sense of – and decisions about – issues affecting our food supply. Perhaps something to aim for in the next round of CAP negotiations.

Topics