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Sustainable intenstification

The term ‘sustainable intensification’ began to gain real currency following a report by the UK’s Royal Society, Reaping the benefits: Science and the sustainable intensification of global agriculture. The thrust of the argument is that the old ways of increasing global food production – bring more land under the plough and adopt the high input, high output technologies of the green revolution – will not work in the 21st century.

It is said that bringing more land into use will have more negative impacts than positive. It will accelerating climate change, loss of biodiversity, social dislocation of people living on the land. Likewise, the high input high output model of the green revolution is said to result in unsustainable pressure on water and soils and a model of farming that is heavily reliant on the extravagent and ultimately unsustainble use of fossil fuels. What’s more, this approach has had significant negative externalities in terms of pollution and loss of wildlife habitats.… Read the rest

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How the CAP budget is perceived by the Member States

Later this week Agriregionieuropa, the Italian on-line review of agricultural economics and policy, together with the Groupe de Bruges will organize a half-day seminar on “The CAP and the EU Budget” in Ancona, Italy, details here.

Franco Sotte, one of the contributors to this seminar, has produced an interesting analysis of CAP budget expenditure to be presented at an EAAE seminar on ‘Evidence-based Agricultural and Rural Policy Making’ which also takes place in Ancona following the budget seminar.

Sotte’s starting point is that much discussion of the CAP budget is based on proposed expenditure as set out in the multiannual financial framework, but that actual expenditure, as revealed in the EU’s Financial Reports on budget spending, can tell a different story. He notes a number of reasons why expenditure trends in these two series can differ:

  • Appropriations for commitments differ from appropriations for payments because it can take time for planned expenditure to actually take place.
… Read the rest
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The challenge of reducing agriculture's greenhouse gas emissions

One of the innovations proposed in the Commission’s communication on the CAP post-2013 is that more resources in both Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 should be devoted to helping agriculture to mitigate and to adapt to climate change.

“Although GHG emissions from agriculture in the EU have decreased by 20% since 1990, further efforts are possible and will be required to meet the ambitious EU energy and climate agenda. It is important to further unlock the agricultural sector’s potential to mitigate, adapt and make a positive contribution through GHG emission reduction, production efficiency measures including improvements in energy efficiency, biomass and renewable energy production, carbon sequestration and protection of carbon in soils based on innovation. “

In terms of mitigation, the challenge for agriculture is to identify cost-effective mitigation measures which can help the agricultural sector to contribute to challenging greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and the long-term decarbonisation of society.… Read the rest

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The challenge of reducing agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions

One of the innovations proposed in the Commission’s communication on the CAP post-2013 is that more resources in both Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 should be devoted to helping agriculture to mitigate and to adapt to climate change.

“Although GHG emissions from agriculture in the EU have decreased by 20% since 1990, further efforts are possible and will be required to meet the ambitious EU energy and climate agenda. It is important to further unlock the agricultural sector’s potential to mitigate, adapt and make a positive contribution through GHG emission reduction, production efficiency measures including improvements in energy efficiency, biomass and renewable energy production, carbon sequestration and protection of carbon in soils based on innovation. “

In terms of mitigation, the challenge for agriculture is to identify cost-effective mitigation measures which can help the agricultural sector to contribute to challenging greenhouse gas emission reduction targets and the long-term decarbonisation of society.… Read the rest

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Developing country impacts of the next CAP reform

I would like to use this post to draw attention to a recent paper which I wrote for the International Centre for Sustainable Trade and Development which examined how developing countries might be affected by the Commission’s proposals for CAP reform set out in the November 2010 communication. One of the positive features in the communication (and in the accompanying consultation paper for the impact assessment) is the explicit recognition that there is an obligation to consider the impacts on developing countries under the EU’s Policy Coherence for Development commitment.

Impacts of Commission Communication on CAP reform post 2013 on developing countries

The next CAP reform will be politically very contentious because it will affect the distribution of payments (both direct payments and rural development payments) between the Member States. However, I argue in this paper that this internal debate has very limited significance for the EU’s trading partners.… Read the rest

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Heads you win, tails I lose

Wyn Grant, Professor at Warwick University and an expert on the CAP, blogs on the subject over at commonagpolicy.blogspot.com. In a blog post this week on ‘The subsidies dilemma’, he notes:

I was recently talking to a journalist from an esteemed weekly who has written on the CAP. He commented that when prices were low, the French (as the main defenders of the CAP) said that subsidies were needed to boost farm incomes. When prices were high or volatile, they were needed to ensure food security. He once asked a French minister if there were then any conceivable market circumstances in which an argument could not be produced in favour of subsidies.

How true, how very true. The rest of Wyn’s post is well worth reading.

… Read the rest
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Doha round agreement would leave EU farm subsidies untouched

According to the EU’s recent notification of farm subsidies to the WTO for the marketing year 2007/08, the EU’s trade distorting farm subsidies fell to a record low of 12.3 billion euros.

As the ICTSD reports,

“For the first time ever, the recent figures would put the EU’s overall trade-distorting support below the proposed new ceiling of 22 billion euros that would be established by a Doha Round accord under the terms currently being considered at the WTO. The Doha deal would create a new subsidy cap that limits the total amount of amber, blue and de minimis support that countries are allowed to provide.”

In other words, on the basis of the notification for 2007/08 (the most up to date that the EU has made), a Doha deal would not require the EU to change any of its farm subsidy policies. This comes as little surprise since the EU wave the magic wand of decoupling and ensured that most of the money it pays farmers is theoretically ‘non trade distorting’ and therefore unaffected by WTO disciplines.*… Read the rest

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Commission's home truths on the CAP

While the Commission’s Communication on the future of the CAP after 2013 is less remarkable for what it says than what it leaves out, one of the accompanying documents is a fascinating read, and reveals much about how the Commission regards the future of the EU’s €55 billion-a-year farm policy.
Despite its unpromising title, the Consultation Document for Impact Assessment shows there are at least some people in the DG Agri bunker who are engaging their brains on the future of the CAP. What’s more, the document hints we might expect something altogether more radical and ambitious when the Commission’s legislative proposals are made later this year.
Most striking about the document are the home truths told about the state of EU agriculture – admissions that one would rarely, if ever, hear uttered in public by a Commissioner or a senior DG Agri official.
First, European farming is in a parlous economic state and ‘the current policy has a strong focus on income support’.… Read the rest

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Commission’s home truths on the CAP

While the Commission’s Communication on the future of the CAP after 2013 is less remarkable for what it says than what it leaves out, one of the accompanying documents is a fascinating read, and reveals much about how the Commission regards the future of the EU’s €55 billion-a-year farm policy.

Despite its unpromising title, the Consultation Document for Impact Assessment shows there are at least some people in the DG Agri bunker who are engaging their brains on the future of the CAP. What’s more, the document hints we might expect something altogether more radical and ambitious when the Commission’s legislative proposals are made later this year.

Most striking about the document are the home truths told about the state of EU agriculture – admissions that one would rarely, if ever, hear uttered in public by a Commissioner or a senior DG Agri official.

First, European farming is in a parlous economic state and ‘the current policy has a strong focus on income support’.… Read the rest

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EU budget debate advances

The likely size of the EU budget in the next financial perspective period (the length of which still remains to be decided, whether 2013-2000 or 2013-2024) became a little clearer last month with the publication of a letter to the President of the European Commission signed by five Member States including France, Germany and the UK as well as the Netherlands and Finland.

This called for an increase in payment appropriations over the 2013 by no more than the rate of inflation, thus maintaining the size of the EU budget constant in real terms. The letter called for commitment appropriations to increase by less than the rate of inflation. It is significant that the letter did not call for a cut in the absolute size of the budget, which has been happening in some Member States.

Proposing the new financial perspective is the prerogative of the Commission, which will make its proposal in July this year.… Read the rest