ANNUAL CONFERENCE
Conference focuses on the CAP post-2013
Europe post-2013 and the CAP was the theme of the SRPBA conference, which was sponsored by Saffery Champness. Speakers were George Lyon MEP, who gave the keynote address; Corrado Pirzio-Birroli, CEO, the RISE Foundation; Richard Wakeford, Director General Rural Futures, the Scottish Government; and Dr Karen Smyth, Rural Development Manager, SRPBA. A full house heard four expert addresses and a Q&A session that shed considerable light on current thinking on a complex area. George Lyon, who is also Rapporteur to the EU Agriculture Committee, set the scene with a resumé of his report on the CAP that has so far received about 780 amendments.
He said that the financial crisis and climate change were drivers of reform, that the key issue was how to square the books over the coming years, and to ensure that climate change was integrated across all policy areas including agriculture. He said: “The CAP should be about food, agriculture and the delivery of public goods, but we can’t deliver public and environmental goods without sustainable agriculture.” He also emphasised that in terms of green growth and climate change, “agriculture must be part of the
SRPBA Chair Luke Borwick (left) with the speakers
solution and not the problem”. He said that the major planks of the CAP needed to be underpinned by measures including decoupling, phasing out of quotas, more tools to tackle volatility, a rescue budget to counter emerging crises, better returns for farmers along the food chain, and an ombudsman to look at unfair practices. He also emphasised that the inevitable shift to an area- based single farm payment regime would not conclude until at least 2020. Corrado Pirzio-Birrolli, a former chief of staff to EU Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler, covered the issue of sustainability as a triple concept – economic, environmental and social sustainability – but said that without economic sustainability, the other two would fail.
He said we needed both more feed and more food, and that at
Working for you
The last year has been busier than ever. The staff at HQ and in the regions have undertaken an immense amount of work on your behalf covering a very wide range of topics. This is not surprising given that landownership and hence land- based businesses interact with the full spectrum of economic, environmental, social and political regulation and issues.
The land-based community is on the receiving end of a significant
amount of new government regulations. It is the task of your Association to be continually scan the horizon for such regulations and directives and to be active in meeting and mitigating these challenges. The Association has endured the storms of the economic downturn and felt its pinch, as have our members. Never has it been more important that the Association is strong in its membership and heart. The challenges and opportunities
LANDBUSINESS ISSUE 36 JUNE-JULY 2010
come thick and fast and we need a strong membership to underpin the essential activity we undertake on your behalf. We have built very good relationships with the Government
present, while it appeared that there was a balance between world food demand and supply, when the millions going hungry were brought into the equation, then already the world has a major food shortage. He also remarked that to persuade Brussels to deliver what we want, smaller organisations would be more effective in uniting in their lobbying efforts and that alliances should be established with environmentalists to secure more votes. Richard Wakeford outlined the DEFRA food strategy looking forward to 2030, but with the major challenge of how to deliver this given planned reductions in public spending, and the DEFRA budget being cut by 30 per cent in the next three years. He questioned whether anyone had asked the public what they thought of the CAP and that it would
be of benefit if “public goods” were properly defined before expecting the market to deliver them. He said rural areas offer huge opportunity, but are undervalued while producing high- value food, water, landscape, forestry, energy supply, cultural assets, and a countryside for enjoyment. Dr Karen Smyth set the SRPBA policy view against a background of the CAP 2014 debate in Europe, the Pack Inquiry report, and George Lyon’s draft paper on the future of the CAP. She said that the SRPBA and the ELO were in agreement that a Food and Environmental Security approach was the way forward. To achieve this, future priorities for the CAP should include a move to area based payments and that historic payments should be phased out from 2014 onwards, that there should be no flat rate payment, that SFP should be delivered on an environmental and cross-compliance basis, and that a contract-based approach should be implemented to include the delivery of payments for public goods.
Papers from the conference are available at
www.srpba.com
here in Scotland and with their Executive Agencies. Through this very positive way of working, we are best able to represent our members’ interests.
This will be another extremely busy year that will stretch the resources of the Association. Your active participation in our work is vital to our continuing success. I would like to thank all members for their continuing support and involvement.
Our Annual review can be downloaded from the SRPBA website at
www.srpba.com
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