Press release by French NGOs: Agir pour l’Environnement, Friends of the Earth, EFNCP, FNAB, FNCIVAM, FNH, LPO, MRJC, 4D, RAC, Solidarité, WWF.

Paris, January 23rd 2012

On January 17, in the Ariege Pyrenean department, President Sarkozy expressed good wishes to the “rural world stakeholders”. The signatories of this communication believe that his vision of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is outdated. Mr Sarkozy’s call to change the agricultural model does not make sense if France has not yet decided to support a real reform of the CAP, which could back more sustainable farming and food systems that are less reliant on aid. [more]

On november 29th, President Sarkozy, along with Farm Minister Bruno Le Maire and Minister of sustainable development Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, has made his eighth travel this year about agriculture. He went in the South-West of France to meet cereal, cattle and duck for foie gras producers. Adressing the farmers, Nicolas Sarkozy and Bruno Le Maire have talked about the CAP post 2013, with this thunderous statement: “your CAP budget is maintained after 2013“! One way to force the destiny with the approach of elections next spring? [more]

On November 14, European Union farm ministers have finally found a compromise that would ensure the financing of the EU Most Deprived Programme (MDP) for 2012 and 2013. Nevertheless, this agreement does seal its fate and prepares the way for its disappearance after 2013.

MDP was put in place by the European Community in 1987. At that time, there were surplus food stocks in the European Union, some of which began to be distributed to charitable associations which asked for it. A year earlier, the famous French comedian Coluche, had successfully persuaded the then president of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, to give some of the CAP surpluses to the destitute. A few months previously, Coluche had founded  the French food relief agency “Restos du coeur” (literally ‘restaurants of the heart’). [more]

Press Release – Paris, 12th October 2011

A group of French environmental organisations, sustainable farming groups, intenational solidarity and rural protection groups have reacted to the proposed changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) unveiled today by the European Commission. If funding for farmers is to go in a positive direction, the rest of the reform proposals leave a lot to be desired.

The proposals made by the European Commission do not constitute far-reaching reform of the CAP. They are distinctly out of phase with the recent Eurobarometer survey1, which found that a clear majority of Europeans who responded want to see a CAP that is more environmentally-friendly; which recognises the value of small farmers and supports local food supply circuits. It is long overdue, in fact, to propose structures which actively promote more sustainable forms of agriculture. [more]

An open letter to the European Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Cioloş published by the financial daily La Tribune, highlights the concerns of a score of French and European organisations over the proposed changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which have been in circulation.

As announced in the outline financial plans for the years 2014-2020, which were released at the end of June, the European Commission intends to link the payment of 30% of the direct subsidy to environmental measures. According to a first leaked draft which is to be finalised and will be presented on October 12, this “greening” of direct payments would be based on farmers meeting three requirements:

•    Crops diversification: to have three different crops growing on arable land, of which the main one should not exceed 70% and the two others should cover a minimum of 5%; apart from these maximum and minimum percentages, this is already a requirement of the Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions (GAEC in English, BCAE in French) and is also part of France’s Agro-Environnmental Measures;

•    Preservation of permanent grasslands, while allowing up to 5% to be ploughed up in case of force majeure; this provision already exists in the French BCAE regulations, without any percentage being stipulated for turning land over to arable use;

•    Ecological Focus Areas: at least 7% of total useable land should be covered, either lying fallow, or terraced, according to the characteristics of the land concerned, or kept as grass field borders or wooded areas. This measure to promote biodiversity has existed in French BCAE requirements, at a rate of 3% in 2011, with the government’s intention at the outset of this scheme to raise the rate to 5% in 2013.

Reckoning that these measures might be a bit ambitious in the light of the European Commission’s communication on the reform of the CAP between now and 2020, a score of NGOs have thus alerted Commissioner Cioloş.

“To the Agriculture Commissioner:
Sir,
The CAP reform of 1992 made the subsidies paid to different holdings visible. This transparency has fed a debate on the purposes of the CAP in the context where the wider social dimensions of agriculture have been increasingly brought to the fore, clarifying the choices that need to be made. Keep things simple. On one side there is the option to continue with an industrial agriculture that is continuing full steam ahead and which adapts by correcting only its most obvious defects and crises. On the other side there is ecological agriculture, which values natural environments, local genetic resources and employment. Four facts arise from this:

1: These two models are in direct competition and their co-existence leads the former to marginalise the latter, as well as assuming its appearance of ecological agriculture while altering the underlying structure.

2: The supposed economic superiority of the industrial agriculture model is only possible with heavy public funding, emergency intervention packages in the event of a crisis and the disowning of costs that are sustained by the environment and public health. Without this strong public funding, industrial agriculture would lose money and it this is also the case for holdings where the owners give up because the running costs are too high.

3: A growing number of case studies now reckon that industrial agriculture no longer has the capability of feeding the world, contradicting what its advocates would like to believe: what is more, it does rather more than just disorganise localised food production systems.

4: Production while managing the environment properly is not an economic aberration – on the contrary, it is the best insurance policy for the future of farmers themselves, European citizens and peasants all over the world. For 20 years now, subjected to the pressure of specific interest groups, successive CAP reforms have remained unachieved, notably on the environmental level. Your arrival in the post of Agriculture Commissioner gave hope to the defenders of a diverse and ecologically vision for European agriculture. The broad consultation launched in spring 2010 on the future of the CAP allowed us to hope for a renewal of the targets and tools. The place given to the environment, rural innovation, as well as small farms, gave us hope to believe that at last the measure and gravity of the problems had been understood. The Communication of the European Commission in November 2010 was ambivalent, but it announced some aspects of greening for direct subsidies, which make up 80% of the CAP budget.

Now, the form of the reform is starting to be defined. And what starts to come out of the Commission offices is worse than disturbing. What has happened to the so-called “greening” of the first pillar? It has been downgraded to a reworking of unambitious measures that have been drafted so that no-one will be upset and the ultimate purpose of [the greening measures] is give the CAP a degree of environmental legitimacy. What happened to targeted subsidies for holdings that were proactively environmentally friendly? Stillborn. It is not even the status quo ante, there is potentially a real risk of turning back the clock: existing ambitious initiatives are at risk of being choked off and certain measures are potentially dangerous. The same applies for rural development policy: we observe a heavy dilution of any environmental priorities and any notion of a minimum budgetary percentage for environmental work has been abandoned. Far from being a goad to change the ways of most member states, the European Union has become an advocate of the lowest common denominator.

We wish to alert European citizens as to what the European Commission is preparing for the coming years. This superficial “greening”, or rather “greenwashing” has largely been supported by France, which is “…prudent when it comes to greening…” in the words of French prime minister François Fillon. In its present form, the  reform would succeed in legitimising subsidies for agricultural holdings which contribute to the further degradation of the environment . Its structures would also marginalise those who work in sensitive ways to supply sustainable food, maintaining the quality of both the landscape and the environment  as well as maintaining employment. Such a waste of public money is as irresponsible as it is unacceptable. We are alarmed by the proposed CAP reforms from the Commission in which the ecological foundations of agriculture are denied and sacrificed to an industrial approach to agriculture. It is our duty to remind of the ambitions that you had at the outset of the CAP reform process: it is time to submit credible and ambitious options to Europe’s leaders, ones that meet the expectations of European citizens and would also save the future of agriculture and farmers. In all its previous forms until now, the CAP has not been capable of preserving jobs nor the environment: this is starting to get on our nerves.”

Signatories:

Agir pour l’Environnement, Dominique Bernard, Président

BirdLife Europe, Angelo Caserta, Directeur régional

Bureau Européen de l’Environnement, Jeremy Wates, Secrétaire général

Chrétiens dans le Monde Rural, Xavier Bonvoisin, Président

Dossiers et Débats pour le Développement Durable (4D), Joseph Racapé, Administrateur

Fédération Nationale d’Agriculture Biologique, Dominique Marion, Président

Fondation pour la Nature et l’Homme, Cécile Ostria, Directrice générale

Forum Européen pour la Conservation de la Nature et le Pastoralisme, Xavier Poux, Directeur

FNCIVAM, Didier Lorioux, Président

France Nature Environnement, Bruno Genty, Président

Générations Futures, François Veillerette, Porte-parole

Greenpeace France, Sylvain Tardy, Directeur de campagnes

IFOAM EU Group, Marco Schlüter, Directeur

Les Amis de la Terre France, Martine Laplante, Présidente

Ligue pour la Protection des Oiseaux, Allain Bougrain Dubourg, Président

Mouvement Rural de Jeunesse Chrétienne, Jérémie Godet, Président

Pesticide Action Network, Simon Gergely, Directeur

Réseau Action Climat-France, Sandrine Mathy, Présidente

Réseau Cohérence, Armina Knibbe, Présidente

Union Nationale de l’Apiculture Française, Olivier Belval, Président

WWF France, Serge Orru, Directeur général

In his Communication on the CAP towards 2020 launched on November 18 2010, Dacian Cioloş proposed: “…to establish an upper limit for payments made to large farms, so as to share out the payments better between farmers.”

Applying a ceiling on the subsidies for the largest farms is a sensitive subject for the EU’s farm ministers. In previous CAP reforms, a majority of them always opposed the Commission on this question, be it in 1992, 1998 or 2002.

Not surprisingly, last March several of them – Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Romania, the UK and Slovakia – resolutely refused any ceiling on subsidies, arguing that holdings need to be competitive. [more]

Public statement published March 30 on leMonde.fr

The environmental problems linked to certain agricultural practices have been made public by scientists and farmers since the 1970s. And in 1983, the environment ministry even decreed “urgent action for water in Brittany.” [The current farm minister] Bruno Le Maire would like to convince us that his ministry has turned the corner for the environment…

Lack of coherence and political will

Even if the Grenelle [environmental package] marked a step in the right direction, the president of the Republic’s words [March 2010 in a round table at the Paris farm show] set off a rebuttal of the environmental agenda when Nicolas Sarkozy said: “I would like to say a word on all these environmental questions. Because that, too, is starting to be too much. (…ça commence à bien faire…)” [These words are normally used to rebuke misbehaving children.] The French state relinquished its headline commitment to environmental measures in agriculture with an announcement in August of a “…moratorium on environmental obligations.” The head of state should not therefore have subsequently obfuscated over his use of that telling phrase and the increasingly animated reactions to it that are making themselves heard. [more]

The European Commission’s communication of November 18, 2010 put forward a series of proposals concerning direct payments made under Pillar 1. Among them, notably, figure the introduction of an ecological component in the form of four measures quoted by way of examples. These were crop rotations, permanent pastures, green cover and an environmental set aside.

In the first place, a proposal that is intended to introduce an environmental element arises from three strands of the debate, namely:

(1) to legitimise disputed subsidies in Pillar 1 of the CAP after 2013 (policymaking)
(2) to secure the budgetary return for certain member states (finances)
(3) to renew the ways in which environment [environmental policy] is integrated [and coherent with] the CAP (governance)

Agriculture ministers divided on the subject

Those in favour of a greener policy argue that it is essential to legitimise subsidies made under the first pillar to justify continued payments on the CAP. Nevertheless, this question is crystalising more rapidly in member states like France, which have retained a Single Payment Scheme based on historic reference subsidies. The resulting distribution of subsidies between farmers remains unfair.

On the other hand, some member states opted for a regionally-based progressive redistribution of subsidies on a regional basis. Others will be sharing out pooled subsidies from 2013 onwards. Neither group sees any of the advantages in the greening as proposed by the Commission. Following the German pattern, they are questioning the need for a supposedly more complex structure, when Germany argues that it would be enough to improve the current rules, namely cross compliance and agri-environmental measures.

On January 24 2011, the Council of Farm Ministers concluded its deliberations on this argument, saying that: “Certain delegations subscribed to the Commission’s suggestion to make the first pillar the main environmental element of the CAP, while others registered a preference that environmental measures should be kept within the Pillar 2 and rural development.”

More recently, the Hungarian presidency on March 17 responded to the refusal of seven member states, including the UK and Sweden to accept these conclusions in the council’s name. The Hungarian presidential view was: “…that the CAP already includes some significant environmental measures and supports the concept of greening the CAP to 2020; underlines that all additional greening would be simple and have good cost-effectiveness; should avoid falling into the middle ground between the pillars and should be based on the experience of the green measures in the existing CAP.”

Here are four ways of thinking of “greening” in the CAP

To sum up, the first two broadly support the Commission’s position, which consists of trying to restore the legitimacy of the CAP’s Pillar 1:

(1) The convergence of environmental standards in the name of conditionality (eg: Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions - GAEC - and Statutory Management Requirements - SMR) between the 27 member states and the simplification of the administrative procedures. This approach is defended by the French farm minister and supported by the national syndicate of farmers’ unions, the FNSEA, not allowing any redistribution of subsidies under Pillar 1.

(2) The targeting of a significant part of Pillar 1 direct subsidies (at least 50%) on agriculture that protects and maintains the environment (organic agriculture; agriculture with high natural value, Natura 2000 zones). This approach is advocated by the European environmental NGOs.

On the other hand, two other options refuse the Commission’s approach, favouring a greening of the CAP through Pillar 2, thus:
(3) Strengthening the agri-environmental measures with a larger financial transfer from Pillar 1 (European Agricultural Guarantee Fund) towards the rural development policy (European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development). This approach is supported, notably, by the UK which considers that the Pillar 1 of the CAP has no future: this country also supports heavy cuts in agricultural budgets.

(4) The obligation to choose at least two “green” measures in Pillar 2 to receive direct subsidies from Pillar 1. This so-called “catalogue” approach is supported by the Member of the European Parliament Albert Dess, but above all contested within the parliament: it aims to support the co-financing of greening by additional modulation and by member states.

Press release: Paris, November 26th

A group of French organisations with shared interests in defending the environment, sustainable agriculture and development, international solidarity and rural movements, have reacted to a communication issued by the European Commission about the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2013, published on November 18.

Our organisations have welcomed with interest the European Commission’s Communication entitled: The CAP towards 2020: Meeting the food, natural resources and territorial challenges of the future.

We welcome the Commission’s willingness to encourage sustainable practices and production systems to ensure the supply of environmental services, as well as the integration of the environment and the fight against climate change as guiding principles in the future development of rural development policy. However, it is still too early to ascertain whether this “greening” is real or fake. [more]

The contribution of the French environment ministry (MEEDDM) to the debate on the post 2013 CAP has sparked a torrent of reactions from the agricultural world. Most of them are hostile.

In an authoritarian manner, the national farmers’ unions and cooperatives representatives rejected “…a split in institutional conduct…” (FNSEA); denounced the lack of “…any realistic economic vision” (Coop de France); wondered “…Who speaks on behalf of France?” (APCA) or criticised a “parisian piece of thinking” (national Young Farmers’ association JA).

In this chorus of criticism, only the peasant organisation Conféderation paysanne greeted “…a brilliant advance [to] link public subsidies to the worker and employment.” Which really is something.

Should the CAP in France really be the exclusive preserve of the agricultural ministry and the agricultural world? In the eyes of the FNSEA or APCA, environment minister Jean-Louis Borloo and secretary of state Chantal Jouanno are not the right people to express their views on the future of the CAP in public. In France, the CAP is a very sensitive subject in the eyes of the deeply conservative agricultural world and one which is not compatible with the Grenelle environmental charter [which the MEEDDM ministerial is in charge of implementing].

Proposals for a strong and ambitious CAP…

However, these two members of the government argue in favour of a strong and ambitious CAP in the letter that accompanies their proposals:

“In our country, agriculture plays a fundamental rôle in the areas of the economy, social policy, environmental policy, health policy and cultural policy. The sustainable development of France as well as Europe, is closely linked to the future of our agriculture.

In particular, major disruption in the environment is a threat to the sustainability of agriculture, whether one considers climate change, the loss of biodiversity, increasingly lifeless soils or low level background pollution. Certain agricultural systems are capable of contributing to this threat.

Agriculture, because it is an activity which has the greatest potential impact on terrestrial ecosystems – it occupies 60% of the national territory – can play a part in setting right the ecological challenges that we face. This rôle would, moreover, be one of the justifications for a strong and ambitious CAP.”

…removed from the environment ministry’s website!

The mounting pressure put on the environment ministry finally led to these proposals being taken down from the MEEDDM website, just one week after they went live.

Several associations responded with a statement (in French) to welcome: “…proposals which set the foundations for a renewed and re-legitimised CAP…” and to denounce the fact that, “…after the FNSEA press release, the proposals should have been taken down from the MEEDDM website,” regretting strongly “…the disappearance which harms public knowledge of a document that is necessary to inform the public.”

These associations underlined the interest in the following proposals:

“to put in place the objective of an agriculture and food policy that would make Europe more autonomous and which would respect the food security [autonomy] of other countries: « The vocation of the European Union is not to feed the world » but to meet its own needs as a priority, notably in the matter of animal feedstuffs, where it has a deep deficit;”

“to make agricultural policy fairer, by establishing criterial for sharing [agricultural] subsidies that are genuinely social and environmental: the end of historic reference prices, the strengthening of good environmental practices, the weighting of aids through employment and proper funding for general environmental benefits (eg organic agriculture, certification of “Haute Valeur Environnementale” (HVE), permanent pasturelands…) and territorial support (eg less favoured regions, farming with high natural value (HNV))

The environment ministry contribution to the debate on the CAP after 2013 remains available to the public [in French] on our website.

MEEDDM (Ministère de l’Écologie, de l’Énergie, du Développement Durable et de la Mer) is the French environment ministry. It is responsible for the environment, sustainable development and the sea.