UK green farming ’not penalised’
The UK will not be "penalised" for championing wildlife-friendly farming under reforms of European policy, the EU’s agriculture commissioner said today.
Brussels is keen to make the common agricultural policy "greener" to ensure the billions of pounds of subsidies for agriculture paid across the EU each year is acceptable to taxpayers.
The European Commission has set out plans to make a share of subsidies dependent on leaving 7% of land aside for wildlife, growing three different crops on arable land and ensuring permanent pasture is maintained, to protect countryside across Europe.
UK farmers are concerned that, having invested in much higher levels of wildlife protection under agri-environment schemes which lead the way in Europe, they will be hit by having to meet other, lower standards to gain their payments.
Speaking at the National Farmers’ Union conference, agriculture and rural development commissioner Dacian Ciolos said he would look at ways of making existing measures count towards the steps farmers had to take to get their subsidies.
"We obviously don’t want to encourage British farmers to do less, to take a step back, but to encourage all farmers in all of Europe to do a minimum of these protections.
"I will look at the possibility of integrating some commitments farmers have in agri-environmental measures, to recognise these kind of commitments as the ’greening’," he said.
Farmers who had trees, hedges and strips of wildflowers planted around fields would not have to put an extra 7% of land on top of that into "set-aside", and those who practised crop rotation would not have to diversify into three crops each year, he suggested.
He recognised that British farmers led the field on wildlife-friendly farming and said: "We are not going to penalise the champions."
Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman claimed the move to recognise that existing environmental schemes in the UK could count towards greening measures was a major breakthrough.
UK officials have previously raised concerns that a "one-size-fits-all" policy for environmental measures across Europe will not work and that the "greening" of the common agricultural policy will amount to little more than "greenwash".
