Did anyone else see ‘The truth about wildlife’ on BBC2 last night? It is on BBC iplayer for the rest of this week. Chris Packham was talking about the loss of wildlife on farmland, and spoke to a wide range of interest groups and farmers. Some would call this farmer bashing, but his call was clearly for the importance of paying farmers to protect wildlife. This is the tough dilemma that RSPB has faced on this issue to date. Raising awareness of declines in farmland birds and other wildlife is vital if we are to secure the funding needed to put this right, but all too often this is seen as putting the blame on the farmer’s door. I would welcome the views of anyone who saw the programme about how this came across.
Last week (12 October), the European Commission’s proposals for CAP reform were finally released. Although long awaited, these proposals are really just the beginning of a long process of negotiation between all 27 EU Member States and the European Parliament. The end result will be a new CAP that will have a profound effect on farmers and the environment from 2014-2020 and beyond.
The RSPB has been deeply disappointed by the reform proposals, but they can still change and it vital that we all do what we can to ensure that the outcome is a policy that genuinely delivers for farmers, consumers and wildlife. You can help by contacting your local MP and MEP to ask what they’re doing to ensure wildlife and environmentally-friendly farming gets a fair deal from the CAP. Read on for more detail...
So what is being proposed?
The 2-Pillar CAP that we’re now all familiar with (with Pillar 1 providing direct payments and Pillar 2 funding Rural Development and agri-environment schemes) will remain but with some significant changes.
Pillar 1
Instead of the Single Payment Scheme, (also known as the Single Farm Payment), Pillar 1 could feature up to six different payment schemes:
If these schemes are agreed in the forthcoming debate, each Member State will have to offer the first 4 schemes and can choose whether to offer the last 2. The Basic Payment would account for the majority of Pillar 1 funding .
Every farmer who entered the Basic Payment Scheme would also be required to enter the ‘Greening scheme’. This scheme would account for 30% of each Member State’s Pillar 1 budget and to get the payment, farmers and land managers would be required to:
The young farmer scheme would provide ‘start-up’ support (for a maximum of 5 years) for new entrants to farming who are less than 40 years old.
The small farmer payment would replace all other payments for those entering the scheme. Recipients would receive a small payment (somewhere between the equivalent of €500-1000) and unlike farmers in all the other schemes would not have to respect cross compliance or the measures set out in the greening payment.
Coupled support would provide payments linked to production in areas where specific types of farming or sectors are facing difficulties and are important for economic, social or environmental reasons. The payment would not seek to increase production in such areas, rather to maintain it at current levels.
The payment for areas under natural constraint is effectively providing ‘Less Favoured Area’ support under Pillar 1 in addition to support already provided (and which will continue to be provided) under Pillar 2.
Pillar 2
Pillar 2 has not been so dramatically transformed. Member States will still have to develop Rural Development Programmes (at national or regional levels), they will still have to offer agri-environment schemes as part of these RDPs and ‘ring-fence’ 25% of Pillar 2 funding for environmental measures.
However, these Rural Development Programmes will be expected to deliver a much broader range of objectives than currently, grouped under 6 priorities:
So is all this good or bad?
In a nutshell, the RSPB has been deeply disappointed by the reform proposals. We have long called for reform that links the public money that funds the CAP with clear ‘public goods’ – things like wildlife, healthy soils and clean water which the market doesn’t properly reward. This would mean CAP money going to those farmers and land managers who are protecting and improving the environment alongside food production.
Not enough money for environmentally friendly farming
It is positive that the reform proposals require 25% of Pillar 2 money to be used for targeted environmental measures (like England’s Environmental Stewardship schemes for example). However, the CAP budget for 2014-2020 will be less than the current budget in real terms so this will mean smaller pot of money for Pillar 2 across Europe. This won’t be enough to meet the scale of environmental need or the level demand from farmers who want to join.
Another highly worrying proposal is also on the table – some Member States may be allowed to transfer up to 5% of their Pillar 2 budget into Pillar 1, further reducing the money available for farmers who wish to enter agri-environment schemes.
Positively, the proposals do provide the ability for Member States to shift (or modulate) up to 10% of Pillar 1 funds into Pillar 2 and this should be welcomed. Although the subject of modulation is often contentious, it must be remembered that without modulation in the UK, we would not have been able to offer the kind of open-to-all agri-environment schemes we have.
No support for High Nature Value farming systems
Despite concerted effort from the RSPB and its BirdLife partners across Europe, the proposals still fail to provide targeted support for HNV systems. These systems, which are generally very extensively managed (and include some of the crofting systems in Scotland and upland farming systems across the UK), deliver outstanding environmental benefits, are socially extremely important and yet currently receive little to no financial support from the CAP.
Potentially damaging ‘simplification’
In a bid to make the CAP simpler and more socially acceptable, the proposals contain some very strange measures indeed. The small farmer scheme is a particularly worrying example as it would provide a payment to small farms with no strings attached and no clear policy objective in mind. The RSPB strongly believes that all farms, large and small, have a shared responsibility towards the environment and there should be no means for farms to effectively opt out.
Another proposal is to target Pillar 1 payments to ‘active’ farmers only. In a bizarre twist, this could actually result in genuine farmers being exclude from CAP direct payments because they have diversified so successfully they make too much of their income from non-farming activities! This proposal could also potentially catch very extensive farming systems which receive very low (but vitally important) CAP payments and where the farmer may have to work another job to make ends meet.
New ‘greening measures’
The new greening measures have caught many of the CAP headlines in recent months. The RSPB hopes that the proposed measures can be designed in such a way that they deliver real and meaningful environmental benefits on the ground, including helping to protect the natural resources needed for long term food production.
In particular, we are extremely hopeful that the proposed Ecological Focus Area requirement will include the right kinds of land management types and features (such as hedges, buffers and margins, areas out of production, ponds and very extensively managed farmland) and will reward farmers who have retained such features, as well as providing an incentive for more farmers to re-inject these features back into the landscape. The EFA requirement is not the same as the old set-aside scheme, which simply aimed to reduce food surpluses by demanding up to 10% of productive farmland be taken out of production. These new requirements could, if designed well, bring both biodiversity and agronomic benefit. However, as for many of the new CAP proposals, the devil will be in the detail.
So what happens next?
Now the reform proposals are out, the complex process of ‘co-decision’ starts. Co-decision is new to agricultural policy. In the past the European Commission proposed the policy and the Member States decided the outcome. Now the Commission proposes but the Member States have to share power with the European Parliament.
The proposals for reform will change during this process and it vital that we all do what we can to ensure that the outcome is a policy that genuinely delivers for environmentally friendly farming. This means ensuring that enough money is available for well-designed agri-environment schemes, that all farmers and land managers do their bit for positive land management and those farming systems which deliver the most for the environment but often get the least from CAP are properly recognised and rewarded.
You can help by contacting your local MP and MEP to ask what they’re doing to ensure wildlife and environmentally-friendly farming gets a fair deal from the CAP.
You can find out who your local MP and MEPs are here: www.writetothem.com
Recently I was fortunate enough to meet with Liberal Democrat MEP Andrew Duff and his team along with my colleagues to discuss the future of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the current reform proposals and the need for a fairer CAP for wildlife, farmers and the EU tax payer.
We had a wide ranging discussion including the current situation in Cyprus regarding the continued, illegal and unnecessary slaughter of migrant bird species. Andrew was deeply concerned over the current situation and clearly wanted to do more and will be in further discussions with RSPB’s Birdlife partner; Birdlife Cyprus.
Andrew was also concerned over how CAP money was and could be spent but importantly we discussed how this money can be spent in good value for money agri-environment options and schemes ensuring the correct land management options at the right scale are selected as we have done at Hope Farm and a growing minority of farmers are doing so here and here and as one farmer Janet Herbert I work with stated; "I consider wildlife to be part of my farm business, and I try to cater for its needs just as I would a crop of wheat. Taxpayers are making a considerable contribution to my income, and I like to think they're getting value for money”
I’m hopeful that Andrew Duff will be a voice in Europe for nature friendly farmers everywhere, they and the wildlife need him and others.
Unlike normal people, who spend their Wednesday evenings enjoying a free ticket to the cinema, the Agriculture Policy nerds at the RSPB have spent the last 12 hours or so digesting and interpreting the EU budget proposals for the period 2014-2020, which were announced last night. As many of you will know there’s a lot at stake for the environment across Europe.
So what was the result? We are viewing the figures with a mixture of relief but also extreme disappointment. Relief because the secret plans of some within the European Commission to make severe cuts to the budget for wildlife friendly farming, forestry management and rural development were pushed off the table late in the negotiations. This is in no small part due to the intense lobbying by us and our supporters, including many farmers who spoke up to protect this essential funding. A sincere thank-you to everyone who helped.
So why the disappointment? According to the Commission’s figures and the narrative around it, funding for Rural Development has been saved from the axe. Isn’t that what we were after? No – is the short answer. The funding is already insufficient to address the challenges facing the natural environment in the wider countryside. And far from increasing the pot of money available for wildlife friendly farming and rural development, the budget has in fact been cut by at least 7% in real terms, compared to the current CAP. If this figure remains unchanged through upcoming European negotiations it will mean less money for farmers who want to improve the environmental benefits their land provides, less money to protect threatened wildlife, less money to manage protected areas, and less money to tackle climate change from agriculture.
All these challenges are ones that Europe itself has promised to tackle by 2020. With this short-sighted budget, it is very difficult to see how they or the UK Government are going to deliver.
So what next? Do we give up and go to the cinema? Hell no – we’re in this for the long haul. As you will see in our press release, the next few months will be vital and the RSPB, its BirdLife partners and other NGO colleagues will continue to work hard to mobilize not just MEPs and Member State Governments, but also continue the work with supporters, members, farmers and other voices for nature in getting the best result possible for biodiversity and the environment, and for the farmers and land managers who can make it happen.
Abigail Bunker, Acting Head of Agriculture Policy
The first bird I learned to identify was a Turtle dove. My great-grandfather taught me about farmland birds as well as the plants and the insects we have. My childhood natural education was all about the wildlife around the farm; where they live, why they are good for the farm and more importantly why we need the birds living on the farm.
Our farmland walks had the benefit of ensuring that everything was in working order and depending on the season, we would look for mushrooms in the cork oak tree woodlands or in the few pines close to the beach. We would unearth Spanish oyster thistle in the spring and make stews with them. Wild asparagus for delicious omelettes made by grandmother were also part of the menu.
My great-grandfather was a Spanish farmer; a good one. We never had a bad year. If a crop failed, the pigs, cattle or sometimes the subsided crops like cotton would balance the income.
A lasting memory is how he used to talk about the farm with the connection that most farmers have with the land. He would say; ‘One swallow does not make a summer...but the arrival of the first Turtle dove says summer is close’.
As a little boy, my curiosity would ignite waiting in hope for the sweet repeated “rourr-rourr-rourr" in early April. This was the beginning of a season of wild encounters around the farm.
Now as an adult, that childish curiosity hasn’t faded. I still delight in the hunt for creepy crawlies in farm scrublands and enjoy the pursuit of discovering new and old wild habitats. One of the wonders of my childhood was the observation of the Turtle dove; bird that symbolises love and peace and my memories. Unfortunately, since then, the beloved turtle dove doesn’t nest anymore, in either our olive trees or the hawthorn. Why? One of the reasons is the food availability. As they arrive in April the crops have been harvested and there is nothing for them to eat and prepare for the breading season ahead.
Ten years ago my uncle adopted measures for the protection of our scrub and designed plans to create transition habitats. One area of our olive tree production was connected to the grassland area. It managed the scrub and added hawthorn and grasses rich in seed.
At the far end of our pastoral field we also included a plot sowed with cereals and sunflower.
Last September, after spending eleven days back home, those childhood feelings flooded back as I prepared to return to the UK. There was a sense that fun was over and it was now time to return to work. It wasn’t the sight of my suitcase packed and ready, signifying my return to reality, but the sound of the migrating turtle dove on her way back to Africa.