Farming: ‘Active Farmers’ must be prioritised in CAP post 2027
ICMSA President Denis Drennan pictured recently with EU Commissioner Christophe Hansen at a meeting on the next CAP Budget.
Speaking following a meeting of the National Council of ICMSA, the president of the association, Denis Drennan, said that two issues are very clear in relation to CAP Post 2027.
“The first is that the budget must be sufficient to ensure that the key issues for EU Farm Policy can be adequately addressed - and that means an increased CAP budget.
"The second issue, and no less important, is that CAP must be firmly focussed on active farmers producing food in a sustainable manner, and by active farmers ICMSA means a minimum 1 LU per hectare stocking density .
“Given the complexity that CAP now involves, we think that to qualify for payments under CAP post 2027 a farmer should have a minimum of 1 LU per hectare stocking density and our logic here is straightforward: CAP payments should be going to farmers who are producing food and dependent on food production for income. They are the people who must be supported,” he continued.
Mr Drennan noted that “obviously” not everyone will agree with the ICMSA proposal with some seeing it as too high and some too low. But the ICMSA President insisted that, as a State, it was time for us to face reality.
“We are asking farmers producing food to take on more and more regulations while, simultaneously, these very same farmers have seen their CAP supports continuously undermined over the last 10 years to breaking point. As a sector, we are asking ourselves about generational renewal and where will the new food producers come from? If we are to answer that – and we have to – then CAP and the definition of an active farmer are going to be part of the answer,” he said.
Mr Drennan noted that, at present, and apart from the ANC scheme which he said "has a ridiculously low minimum stocking density of 0.1 LU per hectare", no other minimum stocking density level applies.
“That’s just unworkable now and simply has to change. Since 2005, there has been a debate over the definition of an active farmer and successive Governments have baulked at the idea of implementing a definition. The result is that farmers producing food continue to suffer losses to payments and people ‘farming schemes’ are effectively prioritised over people farming to produce food and delivering net foreign earnings for the Irish economy.
"That’s just the truth and it has to be addressed.
“ICMSA believes that in order to support sustainable food production, a minimum stocking density of 1 LU per hectare should apply which should mean a higher payment per hectare for farmers producing food and should also meaning a ‘freeing-up’ of land so critical to generational renewal.
"There needs to be a debate on this critical issue, but one thing is for certain: we cannot continue with a status quo that is failing the present generation of food producing farmers and ‘shutting’ out the next generation. We need a real and workable definition of an active farmer in the next CAP and ICMSA believes a minimum stocking density is the correct and most practical method of arriving at that definition,” concluded Mr Drennan.
