Tag: single farm payment

Posted on

How decoupled is the Single Farm Payment?

Three of my Irish colleagues at the Teagasc Rural Economy Research Centre have conducted an interesting simulation to estimate the extent to which farmers treat the Single Farm Payment (SFP) as coupled or decoupled. Using the EU-wide partial equilibrium simulation model AGMEMOD, Peter Howley, Kevin Hanrahan and Trevor Donnellan project Irish production in the cattle and cereals sectors (these were the sectors with the most important payments in the pre-SFP era before 2005) under two assumptions: first, that farmers treat the SFP as fully coupled, and second, that they treat the payment as fully decoupled.

They then compare the levels of production that are projected under the alternative assumptions of full and zero coupling with actual observed output values in Ireland over the period 2005-08.… Read the rest

Posted on

First results from Brno Informal Agricultural Council

The Czech Minister for Agriculture has issued a press release summarising the discussion at the informal agricultural council in Brno today. The subject was the future shape of a simplified system of direct payments and a more even distribution that would result in a fairer competitive environment on the single market. Even allowing for translation issues and the usual blandness of official press releases, this is a particularly opaque example of the genre.

According to the release, the Ministers brought agreement on the issue of the importance of direct payments as well as creation of a new Common Agricultural Policy after 2013.… Read the rest

Posted on

Spending money to pay it out

One of the many drawbacks of the CAP is that it costs a lot of money to run which reduces the sums that reach the supposed beneficiaries. It has now emerged in response to a parliamentary question that each claim for the Single Farm Payment (SFP), irrespective of its value costs £742 to process. Junior Defra minister Jane Kennedy said that the figure was obtained by considering the direct processing costs and the total number of claims received.… Read the rest

Posted on

Don’t watch this, take a look at that

You will be forgiven for wondering why things have been a little on the quiet side here at CAPHealthCheck.eu over the past couple of months. For my part, besides some intensive behind-the-scenes work at farmsubsidy.org and and exciting new EU budget transparency project that’s still under wraps, I’ve been blogging more on the EU budget than on the CAP, mostly over at FollowTheMoney.eu. Among the other leading contributors to this website, Wyn Grant has been on a fact-finding visit to Australia and Alan Matthews has been attending to his teaching responsibilities as well as working away on his forthcoming magnum opus on the CAP and global development.… Read the rest

Posted on

Don't watch this, take a look at that

You will be forgiven for wondering why things have been a little on the quiet side here at CAPHealthCheck.eu over the past couple of months. For my part, besides some intensive behind-the-scenes work at farmsubsidy.org and and exciting new EU budget transparency project that’s still under wraps, I’ve been blogging more on the EU budget than on the CAP, mostly over at FollowTheMoney.eu. Among the other leading contributors to this website, Wyn Grant has been on a fact-finding visit to Australia and Alan Matthews has been attending to his teaching responsibilities as well as working away on his forthcoming magnum opus on the CAP and global development.… Read the rest

Posted on

10 reasons why the Single Payment Scheme is politically unsustainable

The EU spends around 30 billion euros each year on the single payment scheme, by far the largest of the myriad schemes and programmes that together comprise the 54 billion euro budget of the Common Agriculture Policy. The scheme was first introduced in 2005 but it is hard to see it surviving in its current form beyond the end of the EU’s 2007-13 financial perspective. Here are five reasons why the single payment scheme is not politically sustainable. Five more will follow tomorrow.… Read the rest

Posted on

Implications of reforming the basis for SPS payments

A recent paper by Beatriz Velaquez from the European Commission throws light on the consequences of moving towards a flat-rate scheme for SPS payments. Drawing on the Impact Analysis for the CAP Health Check proposals and using the FADN database of farm accounts, she examines three options (a) a flat rate scheme with equal payments per hectare across Member States; (b) a flat rate scheme with equal payments per hectare within Member States; and (c) a flat rate scheme with equal payments per entitlement. Her provocative conclusion is that an EU-wide flat rate would do nothing to improve the distributional equity of the SPS payment scheme.… Read the rest

Posted on

So who voted for what?

Unanimity, like pregnancy, has a binary quality. A decision can’t be ‘virtually unanimous’. But this is just how French farms minister Michel Barnier described this morning’s final compromise agreement on the health check package. So which of the EU 27 member states were unable to acquiesce in the deal? My sources tell Roger Waite tells me it was the UK plus three others (I assume Denmark, Sweden and perhaps the Netherlands or Estonia) Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia [update: and Estonia]. Can well-informed readers offer some further illumination? … Read the rest

Posted on

Podcast: Paulo Casaca MEP on the chaos of Parliament's farm policy

Paulo Casaca MEPIn the second of today’s podcasts from the European Parliament, Paulo Casaca MEP gives his immediate reaction to a series of votes on the CAP health check that saw many MEPs break ranks from agreed party lines, evidence of the passions that are aroused when the Parliament debates food and farming. He argues that the Parliament has lost its way on the CAP and must come up with a new vision for the future of the policy. Mr Casaca is a Portuguese member of the Socialist Group and represents the Azores. He sits on the Budget Committee and chairs the pro-CAP reform Land Use & Food Policy Intergroup.… Read the rest