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Environmental groups react angrily to failure to 'green' the new agricultural policy

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The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and others reacted angrily. EEB say Europe will continue to fund harmful intensive farming practices until at least 2027. The most contentious parts of a new €54 billion-a-year EU agriculture policy 2023-2027 have just been finalised. The EEB says it is a failure to shift support to ecological farming is a major policy failure. The revised Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was presented as green, but EEB claim it will support rapid growth in the most polluting farms and wipe out millions of small farms. 

The 2021-2027 CAP being finalized by negotiators will again be presented as a win for the environment. They green campaigners say weaker-than-ever rules for farm payments and no meaningful environmental targets mean that around three quarters of the €270 billion farm budget will go to intensive farms, according to Europe’s largest federation of environmental groups, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB). Financial accountability has not improved either. 

Eco-schemes have been created for the first time, worth [up to €11 billion a year, but control of this and all other CAP funding has been handed to member governments with weak accountability and with a history of favouring intensive farming. Spending plans in France, Germany and Portugal suggest the countries will continue prioritising intensive farming methods at the expense of environmental protection.

Biodiversity

Intensive agriculture is the single biggest driver of species extinction and creates 15% of Europe’s climate emissions. There is widespread pesticide contamination of farmland and fertile soil is being lost faster than it can regenerate in over 10% of Europe’s land area, cutting production by an estimated €1.25 billion per year. Droughts and heatwaves linked to a warming climate are increasingly hitting farm production. Ecological farming can help halt or reverse these problems and meet European food security.

EEB agriculture policy officer Célia Nyssens said: “The EU spends more on farmers than on anything else, making farm policy a powerful tool for good or for bad. We could be helping farmers restore degraded soils, adapt to climate change and rescue collapsing bee and other wildlife populations. But this new policy is a monumental failure of leadership to take on those grave threats. We are already seeing national governments planning for business as usual, to keep the money flowing to intensive farms. The European Parliament should take the rare step of throwing out this destructive deal this summer, to force a reset.” 

The EEB say the new CAP will be a serious obstacle to nationally agreed environmental targets, including cutting European climate emissions by 55% and ending biodiversity loss by 2030. It will also clash with flagship European environmental farming targets to halve pesticides use, halve antibiotic use and halve fertiliser pollution, grow organic farmland from 8% to 25% and dedicate 10% of farmland to wildlife habitats.

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