CAP Health Check

The EU Commission considers how it can compensate for the loss of set-aside. 

01/07/2008

This year’s negotiations on the EU Common Agricultural Policy - termed a ‘health-check’ since it aims to be more of a stock-taking exercise rather than radical reform -  has suddenly become crucial for farmland conservation. This is because of the unexpected decision last summer to do away with set-aside - in a single step and without any thought to the wildlife consequences. 

Since then various organisations – including a unit within Defra – have pointed out that over the years set-aside has proved beneficial to the environment and helped some birds and mammals in particular.   So during the last few months there has been a bit of clamour to undo the potential loss and put some mitigating measures in place.

The EU Commission has hinted that it is prepared to do this; stating that, as part of the ‘health-check’, it wants to retain the environmental benefits of set-aside while getting rid of it at the same time. Not easy.

So far the Commission’s only proposal for mitigation is to require wider buffer strips adjacent to water courses. Not a bad idea in itself, but far from adequate compensation for the loss of some 8% of agricultural land.

So what should be done? Clearly it is unreasonable to expect all this 8% to be turned over to conservation as this would simply undo what the Commission has just recently done. But, what about 1% or even up to 4%? The lower end of this is certainly not unreasonable. Further, we think, if this small fraction is used cleverly it could do much more for conservation than the larger fraction did under set-aside rules.

A key feature of any new ‘conservation set-aside’ land would have to be that it would be distributed evenly across farms. This means small areas (of about one hectare) that would be scattered amongst the big arable blocks of wheat and rape. Too much of the old set-aside was relegated to a single lump that was abandoned on an outlying part of the farm or as a single field unsown for a season as part of the rotation. Getting the size of these conservation areas right is important. Too big and they become inefficient, whereas reducing them to thin marginal strips would make them unsuitable to the species that one wants to benefit.

Another issue is, if there were to be ‘conservation set-aside’, does it become mandatory for all farmers receiving a Single Farm Payment, or does it become optional under an environmental scheme? The disadvantage of the latter is that with cereal prices currently being so high anything optional is likely to be ignored unless payments truly reflect the profit-forgone plus some incentive. It is not clear there would enough money to fund doing it this way.