Written evidence submitted by the Campaign
to Protect Rural England (CPRE)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CPRE would like to raise the following key points
in relation to the inquiry:
— Competitiveness—CPRE
strongly believes that our farming industry is an immensely valuable
national asset, which makes strategic, technical, environmental
and societal contributions to our wellbeing that go far beyond
short term calculations of its economic contribution to national
prosperity from food and commodity production.
— Food
security and environmental sustainability—There is a particular
challenge to ensure the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and rural
development funding supports the maintenance of Europe's cultural
landscapes, both farmed and natural, which are subject to a range
of agricultural and non-agricultural land use pressures.
— The
European Commission's proposed options—CPRE believes we
need a reformed CAP that maintains, enhances and restores the
character of our rural landscapes, wildlife habitats and cultural
heritage, with a range of related public benefits clearly stated
as objectives. The attendant public benefits of competent and
responsible agriculture would be accommodated through the creation
of a new and properly funded European Sustainable Land Management
Policy. The aim of this would be to deliver a range of environmental
public goods by supporting environmentally sustainable farming;
encouraging and rewarding existing agricultural, horticultural
and forestry practices that deliver environmental public goods
as well as those that are currently under-valued and under-rewarded,
including the protection of soil and water resources.
Competitiveness
1. CPRE recognises the need for the UK's
farming sector to be profitable. The reasons why some sectors
are or are not profitable are highly complex and depend not just
on changes to production methods or the effects of payments from
the CAP but also on how the supply chain operates from the farm
gate to the shop till.
2. In production terms, the focus of solutions
to improving competitiveness has tended to be on restructuring
and technological innovation, so it is unsurprising that the CAP
seeks to facilitate these outcomes. This approach leads, however,
to an assumption that the future of the industry lies in technologically
assisted intensification and consolidation of production. Recent
history suggests this could have negative consequences for our
agricultural landscapes and habitats.
3. New technological advances and innovation
could undoubtedly lead to beneficial environmental outcomes, for
example by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, CPRE believes
the agricultural sector could equally benefit from competing in
terms of food quality and environmentally sustainable production
which could maintain and enhance landscape character and biodiversity.
The problem is that the market does not provide or adequately
reward the delivery of these public goods, so policy interventions
in the form of agri-environment payments are required. This creates
a situation where production and profit appear to be in conflict
with the provision of environmental public goods. The next incarnation
of the CAP should enable economic competitiveness and sustainability
to work together to deliver complementary outcomes.
Food security
4. CPRE believes the issue of food security
is often over-simplified and characterised solely as a need to
increase the quantity of food produced to prevent a growing global
population from starving. This is often portrayed as both a moral
imperative and an economic opportunity for European farmers. This
approach fails to give sufficient weight to a number of associated
issues beyond providing adequate quantities of food, including
diet and nutrition, food quality and safety and long term environmental
sustainability.
5. The EU needs to consider to what extent
food security should become part of future land management policies
and, most importantly, how to ensure there is an appropriate balance
between priorities for environmental protection and security of
food supplies. The food price roller-coaster of recent years,
and the scale of market opportunity presented to European farmers,
should not be allowed to obscure the public benefits that arise
from environmentally sustainable farming practices. Agri-environment
schemes can help to reduce the impacts of volatile commodity markets
on farmers by providing additional, guaranteed income streams
over set periods of time.
Environment
6. CPRE is a signatory to Wildlife and Countryside
Link's (Link) policy document, Beyond the Pillars[11].
This calls for major reform of the CAP to evolve it into a European
Sustainable Land Management Policy (ESLMP). This would reward
farmers for providing a wide range of environmental public goods,
including managing landscape and historic environment features
and habitats. It would move away from the two pillar structure
of the current CAP, effectively creating a more comprehensive
Pillar II with a greatly increased level of funding. This increase
would, we believe, be justified by the need to provide high quality
environmental public goods, on a large scale, to the citizens
of Europe.
7. One example of this is the fact that
most of the landscapes, public access and habitats that we value
require management which is intimately associated with the productive
use of land. CPRE's joint research[12]
with the National Farmers Union illustrates this point very clearly.
We estimated that landscape management activity was worth around
£412 million per year, beyond that directly stimulated or
required through agri-environment schemes.
The European Commission's proposed options
8. CPRE has cautiously welcomed the European
Commission's recently published communication. In simple terms
the three options it sets out are for a status quo, a greening
of Pillar I or a new policy predominantly focused on environmental
outcomes. We were disappointed, however, that the role of agri-environment
schemes was omitted from all of the options.
9. We welcome the inclusion of Option 3
which proposes a radical reform of the CAP, re-orientating it
towards environmental outcomes along the lines of Link's proposal
for a ESLMP. It appears, however, that this would be a
policy with a much reduced level of funding for land management
overall, and Link has stated clearly that the policy it is calling
for would need to be adequately funded to ensure the delivery
of a wide range of environmental public goods. There remains a
need to conduct a comprehensive assessment of both the cost to
farmers of managing our countryside and its wildlife, and the
value of these public goods, environmentally, socially and economically.
10. CPRE also recognises that there is a need
for additional, focused support to those farmers who are vital
to maintaining particularly important habitats and landscapes.
In this respect some aspects of the proposals set in out in Option
2 warrant further consideration and debate.
11. We also welcome the proposal in Option 2
(which we presume would also be included in Option 3) to introduce
measures to encourage the storage of carbon in soils. This presents
an opportunity to look at soil sustainability issues in a much
wider context and to improve the state of many degraded soils
in the UK and across Europe. It also chimes well with recommendations
made by the recent Commission for Rural Communities inquiry into
the future of the uplands[13].
This identified new opportunities to reward upland farmers for
providing ecosystem services that are currently under-valued,
including managing carbon rich peat soils.
December 2010
11 Beyond the Pillars: Wildlife and Countryside
Link's policy perspective on the future of the CAP (2008) Back
12
Living Landscapes: hidden costs of managing the countryside
(2006) Back
13
High ground, high potential-a future for England's upland communities-(July
2010) Back
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