Members of the European Parliament have taken part in a crucial vote on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) today. The Scottish Wildlife Trust has worked hard to make sure that the environment was taken seriously in this historic vote.
Reaction to the vote has been mixed as the outcomes for the environment have not been entirely positive.
Scottish Wildlife Trust Chief Executive Simon Milne said:
“Today we haven't seen the radical reform of land management payments that we and other NGOs were hoping for. However, the Scottish Wildlife Trust are hopeful that meaningful greening of the CAP can be achieved.
“We are delighted that land managers will not be paid twice for specific land management practices. This would have provided poor value for taxpayers' money, wasted budget that could be more effectively deployed elsewhere and reflected badly on ordinary farmers.
“The MEPs also showed support for tying direct payments, which are worth about €600 million to Scottish farmers, to the creation of Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs) and other green measures. Unfortunately, these EFAs will be phased in very gradually starting at just 3% of farmland. This means that lots of land managers will have to give over at least 3% of their land to these ecological focus areas. However, almost every farm already meets this description because of features like hedges, streams and dry stane dykes.
“We are also glad that many measures under cross compliance are going to be reintroduced. However, there has been a real missed opportunity to link the protection of carbon rich soils and wetlands to direct payments.
“The Scottish Wildlife Trust still firmly believes that the CAP must be made much 'greener' to return our ecosystems to health and protect and restore our environment for the benefit of people, wildlife and sustainable long-term agriculture.”
The term 'cross-compliance' refers to the requirement for farmers to comply with a set of Statutory Management Requirements and keep their land in good condition, both agriculturally and environmentally speaking, in order to qualify for the full single payment and other direct payments.