New CAP may fit Irish farmers after all

Many farmers are looking at some elements of the CAP package positively

Many farmers are looking at some elements of the CAP package positively. Seán MacConnell, Agriculture Correspondent, reports

It might well emerge that the remodelled Common Agricultural Policy which is being proposed in Brussels, fits far more snugly on Irish farmers than we are led to believe.

Ten days and one negotiating session after the announcement was made, there is growing evidence that the reform of the CAP which eats ups 40 per cent of the entire EU budget, may be very acceptable to quite a few farmers.

The Fischler reforms, which came as part of what should have been a mid-term review of the last shake-up of the CAP, Agenda 2000, proposed a break in the link between subsidies and production for beef, sheep, oilseed and cereal farmers.

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It placed an upper limit on what any single farmer could expect to take in subsidies at €300,000, but said no one earning less than €5,000 from the system would be penalised.

The EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr Franz Fischler, has also linked future aid to environmental and food safety standards.

The Commissioner proposed that there should be a staged 21 per cent cut in direct payments to farmers but insisted that the total EU farm budget, now worth €40 billion a year, would not be cut.

The main farm organisations, anxious about any change in the current system and well aware of the second Nice referendum in the autumn, have muscled in on the Government and told them they are happy with the way things are now.

The Government, anxious to please both Irish farmers and EU colleagues, adopted a carefully-worded mantra that it would protect the gains made in the last reforms and expressed unease at what was being suggested.

On Monday when the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, went out to Brussels for the opening round of negotiations, he found himself fronting the EU opposition to the package, rather than conveniently using the coat-tails of the French government.

At home, the Irish Farmers' Association and the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association expressed themselves satisfied with his performance at the Farm Ministers' meeting, which will resume in the autumn.

Only one farm organisation, the Irish Cattle and Sheepowners' Association, which represents drystock (beef and sheep farmers), came out and said they saw opportunities in the proposals.

Most of the farmers not actively involved in farm politics, who made contact with this newspaper or were asked for their views, were less trenchant in their opposition to the proposals than the leaders of the main organisations.

They are attracted by the idea that the reforms will dramatically reduce bureaucracy, because one single payment per farm will replace the myriad of forms they now have to fill in to collect their payments.

They did, however, want future payments to be index-linked.

Most were concerned about the cuts proposed in direct payments over the next few years but reckoned that, with enlargement, subsidies would be cut anyhow and as long as there was some sort of compensation for these they would accept the new measures.

The farmers broke down into two distinct categories.

Many of the older farmers saw in the proposals, a way to retire or dramatically reduce their work levels on farms.

More than 45 per cent of the State's 143,000 farmers are aged over 55 and in general those spoken to said they saw this as a way of getting out of the business gracefully.

Only four Irish farmers receive over €300,000 and 30 per cent receive less than €5,000.

The younger, progressive farmers who do not fear the reforms, said they believed that milk, beet and other quotas could not survive into the end of this decade and they would welcome the opportunity of dairying or going into tillage, without the restrictions quotas place on them.

All farmers, however, were upset that what should have been a mid-term review had now become a full-scale reform, and that plans made two years ago to facilitate the Agenda 2000 agreement would have to be revised.

Farmers have no major problems with meeting any food safety or animal welfare standards the negotiations may throw up, but there is general fear that the live export trade could be stopped.There was broad agreement that the uncoupling of premiums from production would lead to a fall in animal numbers, something which has deeply upset the processing sector which needs a ready supply of animals.

The Irish Meat Association, representing the meat plants, has sought a full impact survey on just how such a fall, especially in sheep and beef production, would affect them.

This will, of course, take place against the background of a major rationalisation of the beef-processing industry, which already has over capacity to deal with the national kill.

While no final decisions will be made on this package until early next year, the involvement in this debate of consumers and those interested in world trade and its impact on less developed countries, has meant this will be a much wider examination of the Europe's agriculture system than at any time in the past.

The fine-tuning of the CAP will most certainly deliver some interesting issues in the months to come.