Memorandum submitted by The Soil Association
(CAP 20)
KEY POINTS
1. The Government's paper, "A Vision
for the Common Agricultural Policy" published on 2 December
2005 by HM Treasury and Defra is a vision for reducing the cost
of financing the Common Agricultural Policy, not a vision for
European food and farming. The report may describe what the UK
Government is aiming to achieve in terms of European agricultural
budgetary reform in 10-15 years, but it provides no coherent vision
for the future of British food and farming, nor for the British
countryside.
2. Such a vision is urgently required. It
needs to update and take forward the initial, positive moves to
reform UK agriculture introduced as a result of the work of the
Curry Commission and the recent reform of the CAP. It must take
account of global pressures (for example to end export subsidies
and to increase free trade). It needs to take account of the realities
of the constraints on the CAP budget. It needs to take account
of the huge changes and new limits in a world threatened by climate
change—continuing high oil (and Nitrogen fertiliser) prices,
ever stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions, and the environmental
disruptions caused by climate change induced extreme and unpredictable
weather conditions. It also needs to take account of, and work
with, emerging market trends in food purchasing. Above all, the
vision needs to reflect the values that commonly underlie European
citizens' attitudes to the food they eat, and the countryside
from which at least some of that food comes.
3. Farming is different from other industries.
While we can import food from other countries, we can not export
our farmland, woods, hedges and fields, in the way that factories
making manufactured goods have been moved to other countries over
the last few decades. We cannot import the songs of skylarks rising
over meadows, the call of red grouse across heather moorland or
the sight of a bluebell wood or hares boxing in the spring. Nor
can we import the smell and taste of carrots fresh from the earth,
the traditions and taste of local Cheshire cheese, or the flavour
and beauty of beef from traditional Longhorn cattle. The British
people have an intimate, long-standing and culturally important
relationship with the British countryside. That countryside should
and will have a major role in producing local, fresh and seasonal
food for the British people.
4. The threat of climate change and the
need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions mean that to survive,
agriculture must lose it's addiction to oil, just as, according
to George Bush, the American people have to lose their addiction
to oil. To be sustainable, farming must use renewable energy from
the sun to produce fertility, via nitrogen fixing plants. Low
Carbon, not high competitiveness on world markets, must become
the main driver of Government policy.
5. The Government's priorities for CAP reform
should serve not lead its vision for the British countryside,
food and farming. Further CAP reform should move money from Pillar
1 to Pillar 2. Pillar 2 funding in the UK should aim to do much
more than just to protect wildlife. Pillar 2 funding should work
with the growing market for good quality food to secure more wildlife
and wider environmental benefits (particularly reduced greenhouse
gas emissions), the highest possible standards of farm animal
welfare, benefits to local economies, and a range of social benefits
including food that provides the best possible diet, improves
human health and enhances social cohesion.
6. In fact, the latest EU budget settlement
suggests that the changes in agricultural policy aimed at securing
greater sustainability, introduced following the report of the
Commission chaired by Sir Don Curry, are now at risk, because
of the financial pressures on rural development and environmental
management programmes. So what vision for the future that the
Government did have now appears to have been ditched in favour
of trying to reduce CAP expenditure by any means, and at any cost
to the environment and the British countryside.
7. At present, the outlook for Pillar 2
is dire. Under the recent budget deal, funds available for Pillar
2 (Rural Development) will be some 30%-40% lower than at present,
and without substantial modulation, probably up to the 20% maximum,
it seems certain that in future Defra will not be able to pay
for the just-launched land management schemes, the Entry Level
Scheme, the Organic Entry Level Scheme, and the Higher Level Stewardship
Scheme. As a result of modulation, paying for new EU members,
inflation, and the limit on EU expenditure (financial discipline),
some experts estimate that the recently agreed EU budget for the
seven years 2007-2013 will result in cuts in Single Farm payments
in England of over 50% by 2012.
8. Current policies, such as they are, concentrate
on trying to secure individual public goods through particular
(often expensive) schemes or new, and much resented, regulation.
The system of organic farming, and organic food, provides a bundle
of public goods (healthier food, less greenhouse gases, more wildlife,
less pollution, more jobs, better animal welfare, conservation
of soils, robustness in the face of drought), all supported by
a growing market demand.
9. The Government should promote this positive
future for British farming, and should lead the way by changing
public procurement to ensure the public sector only uses food
that is as climate friendly as possible. The Government should
encourage all restaurants, catering in places where people work,
pubs and cafes, to follow this lead. Farmers should be aiming
to produce food that people want to eat, close to where they want
to eat it. Systems which avoid nitrogen fertiliser and rely on
organic principles, and which favour fresh food, plenty of vegetables
and less and better quality meat, will benefit people's health
and allow everyone to eat good quality food. This sort of farming
will be good for wildlife, good for animal welfare, will create
more jobs in the British countryside, will be good for people's
health and will help us protect the future of the planet as a
whole.
INTRODUCTION
10. The Soil Association is a charity founded
in 1946 to achieve sustainable and healthy food production, based
on observations and principles developed by the pioneers of the
organic farming movement. The Soil Association is now the main
organisation of the organic movement in the UK, and our trading
subsidiary, Soil Association Certification Ltd, is the main certifier,
certifying about 70% of the organic food sold in the UK. The objectives
of organic farming are environmental sustainability and the natural
production of healthy crops to produce healthy food.
11. Organic farming accounts for about 4%
of UK farmland; there are strong indications that this is set
to rise rapidly following a pause in growth pending the introduction
of the new Single Farm Payment. Despite the higher prices, sales
of organic food are growing each year and are now worth £1.2
billion, with UK organic farmers supplying about 45% of this,
compared to just 30% a few years ago. Localised food economies
are also a goal of the organic movement, and local and direct
sales from organic farms grew by 30% in 2004, compared to an overall
growth in organic sales of 11%. While continuing to grow, supermarket
sales represent a declining share (down to 75% in 2004 compared
to 81% the year before). Overall, sales of organic food were £2
million a week more in 2004 compared to 2003.
12. Organic farming is the most sustainable
farming system by far and is applicable throughout the country.
The Government now accepts its sustainability, biodiversity and
animal welfare benefits. Considerable research in recent years
has shown a range of environmental benefits from organic farming
including a significant reduction in the energy required to produce
food, decreases in carbon dioxide emissions, increases in farmland
wildlife, reduction in agrochemical pollution and reduction in
waste. DEFRA have published a major paper setting out these benefits.
13. On this basis, DEFRA adopted an action
plan for organic food and farming in 2002, committing the Government
to expanding organic farming, with a target that 70% of the UK
organic food market should be supplied by UK farmers by 2010.
The expansion of UK production is currently on course to meet
that target. An increase in the area of organic farming is one
of the Government's "quality of life" indicators. DEFRA
have supported the inclusion of organic food in sustainable public
food procurement, as have the Department of Education's School
Meals Review Panel, that reported last year. English Nature also
wants to see more organic farming because of the biodiversity
benefits.
GLOBAL AGRICULTURE—FOOD
SECURITY
14. The UK Government have been clear for
many years that they are not interested in UK food security, in
the sense of this country retaining any capacity to feed ourselves
from our own resources. Nor do they appear to be interested in
assessing what food will be capable of being reliably produced
and supplied in a world where carbon, not cash, is the key currency.
In any event, food is not like other commodities; the drive for
least cost, most competitive globalised food production is misguided
on economic, human health, environmental, animal welfare and social
grounds. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions alone dictates
that all countries should aim for self-sufficiency in the foods
that they can produce locally and in season. More generally, the
outputs of a nation's agriculture cannot and should not be seen
as mere commodities, since farming and farming systems have an
influence on food security, energy use, climate change, the wider
environment, public health and cultural stability. Bearing in
mind all these issues and the current debate about sustainable
development, an enlightened policy position for the future of
global agriculture would be to encourage national self sufficiency
in food and farming products, taking into account the constraints
of climate, seasonality and the area of land available for agricultural
production. Developing countries should be encouraged to develop
self-sufficiency in indigenous food.
15. In the UK, our farming policy should
aim to meet demand from consumers for local, good quality, environmentally
friendly food, and demand from citizens for a beautiful, productive,
wildlife and welfare friendly countryside that welcomes visitors,
and provides good jobs and a high quality environment for residents.
The aim for UK farming should be to produce high quality, local
food, within a food culture that emphasises seasonality, local
distinctiveness, fresh produce, less but higher quality meat,
all based on a far closer and more direct connection between people
and the farms where their food is grown or reared. Organic farming
provides multiple benefits because of the nature of the system
itself, not because farmers have to be encouraged to put land
or labour aside for wildlife or the environment, or told to moderate
their operations through regulation. Organic farming and food
delivers benefits for human health, for the climate and the environment
generally, creates significantly more jobs in the countryside,
and improves animal welfare. The growth in organic food sales
shows that the market is driving UK farming in this direction
in any event, and that these developments are clearly in line
with very strong underlying public values.
16. Organic farming produces little or no
commodity crops for sale on world markets, and no mass, industrial
rearing of chickens, pigs, or beef cattle. Yields of milk are
lower than intensive, high protein and grain-fed dairy systems.
Much wider adoption of organic production, not just in the UK,
but within the EU as a whole, would bring supply and demand for
agricultural products into balance, removing the need for EU farmers
to try and compete on world markets increasingly dominated by
lower-cost producers, with lower land and labour costs, and often
benefiting from better soils and climate, such as the Ukraine,
Brazil or Thailand.
17. The impact of adopting this position
internationally, and in particular at the World Trade Organisation
(WTO), might be to introduce a "licence to trade" system
whereby food could only be traded on international markets if
minimum conditions were met—including sustainable methods
of farming; non-indigenous commodities, for example tea, coffee
and bananas for the UK; out of season crops, for example apples
in late winter onwards in the UK; and a country's structural incapacity
to meet self sufficiency needs. The alternative of increasingly
free trade based on current, climate-unfriendly, cheap global
transport, will benefit major agricultural exporters, generally
developed or emerging economies, at a terrible cost to some of
the poorest, least developed and most vulnerable countries on
the planet.
18. If these new terms for sustainable trade
were agreed at WTO level, this would have profound implications
for future CAP reform and it would cast a somewhat different light
on, for example, the French, Irish and German Governments' positions,
which rightly value their agriculture as contributing far more
than merely food to their nation's security and well-being. In
contrast, the UK Government are giving the clear impression that
the future of European agriculture hinges on being internationally
competitive in world markets whilst at the same time being sustainable
and catering for so-called "niche" markets. These two
sets of objectives are not compatible, and the UK's position has,
rightly, been strongly criticised in the media by the EU Agriculture
Commissioner, among others.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES—THE
NEED FOR
CARBON EFFICIENCY
19. The key environmental driver of public
policy towards the farming and food industries must be to secure
far greater carbon efficiency, focussing on all of the inputs
into farms as well as what happens on farms, transport and processing
post farm and the packaging, transport and waste involved in the
distribution of food to consumers. Although the market for organic
food is growing strongly throughout the EU (and indeed globally),
the market for food is failing to reflect some key external costs
of industrial and intensive food production. As well as the impact
of greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, the use of pesticides
imposes significant costs on society as a whole which should be
borne by the industry through the introduction of a pesticide
tax.
20. In 1999 the UK Government gave an unambiguous
promise in Parliament that they would protect organic food in
the UK from any GM contamination. Such protection is essential
to allow the market to work, and to allow people to choose to
buy organic food free of GM contamination. The EU Commission's
recent proposal that organic food can be contaminated with up
to 0.9% GM (almost one in a hundred mouthfuls) without any labelling
to inform consumers of the GM content, is completely unacceptable.
GOVERNMENT ACTION
NEEDED
21. The Government plays an important role
in setting the objectives for farming in the UK, because of the
long history of farming fortunes being linked to public policy,
for example on free trade or protectionism. Since 1935, what farmers
produce, and their profits (or lack of them) have been intimately
controlled and are still strongly influenced by Government policy.
The Government needs to set out a clear and positive vision for
the future of British food and farming, for all involved to aim
at. The Government should welcome existing positive changes and
trends, and allow them to continue, without interfering with them.
The Government should be clear that, on climate change grounds,
the costs of energy based on oil or natural gas is going to remain
high or get higher, so that nitrogen fertiliser costs are likely
to rise rather than fall, and that Carbon efficiency not just
economic efficiency, will be the criteria against which the success
of food production and distribution will be judged. The Government
should ensure that agriculture pays for its own external costs,
for example through mechanisms like a pesticide tax.
February 2006
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