GNDE –Civil Society https://report.gndforeurope.com/
In the previous newsletter we wrote about the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). We have been asked to explain why we are so sceptical. An article by Hannes Lorenzen, chair of ARC2020, puts it better than we can. For years the ARC group, which is an independent non-profit NGO, has been advocating for a CAP based on better farming, food, rural and environmental policies for Europe and the whole world.
For the full picture see the original text; here we reproduce only the part that describes the situation that would be created by this CAP in 2027.
Brussels, January 2027
Finally, the breakthrough has been achieved! The EU has achieved the agricultural turnaround – radical and uncompromising. The realisation came late, but just in time.
With the Green Deal, the Farm to Fork programme and the ambitious biodiversity strategy, the European Commission had responded to strong public pressure at the end of 2020, but failed one last time due to the blockade of the Council of Agriculture Ministers and the European Parliament. The agro-industrial lobby defended the per hectare payments, which were completely unsuitable for agricultural policy, and had prevented both social and ecological conditions for direct payments.
Only a few years later drastic corrections became inevitable. The Covid crisis, extreme weather with catastrophic floods in the south of the EU, and prolonged droughts and crop failures in northern Europe had led to further increasing protests, including by farmers. This forced the Member States to reorient their strategic plans for all agricultural and forestry production and gradually to implement regenerative and socio-ecological principles in their regulations and make them a condition for public support.
The European Commission delivered astonishingly consistent directives and regulations to this end. During the long-lasting Covid crisis the central processing and supply structures had proven to be unsuitable, and food insecure. In response, the Commission turned off direct payments for land speculators, major investors and agro-industrialists. Small-scale structured farming and solidarity-based agriculture with local and regional supply structures was declared a maxim.
A new European spirit of cohesion
Despite the usual blockades and disputes in Brussels, a new European spirit of cooperation and cohesion emerged between 2021 and 2027 against the backdrop of the global economic crisis triggered by Covid-19. A surprisingly vital civil society, movements such as Fridays for Future and rural parliaments created a new self-confidence in the regions.
The economic crisis, which mainly affects urban areas, has now been tackled from the countryside. Many young families had moved from the city to rural areas thanks to the new digital possibilities. Many new networks of innovative businesses were created, creating new livelihoods combining agricultural, horticultural, food processing and tourism activities with a wide range of online services. Socio-ecological agriculture and forestry, digital and practical in situ training and, above all, social innovation in the field of local energy and transport systems and local industrial production of machinery and IT, made it possible to significantly reduce the burden on urban areas and to create a local bio-economy adapted to climate change.
Europe, with its new integrative power, has become a model for many regions of the world, partly because the nationalism that had long been rampant was lost through new solidarity between national and regional governments. In this way, Europe will come quite close to the goal of climate neutrality as early as the beginning of 2027. The new programmes to mobilise and promote youth within the framework of a new intergenerational social contract have pushed the transformation process forward at an astonishingly rapid pace.
We can only hope that all this will occur.
CAP in 2027 CAP Reform | Postcards From The Futurehttps://www.arc2020.eu/cap-reform-postcards-from-the-future/
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