CAP has been good for all Europeans – Joe Healy

We have probably failed as Europeans to get the message out to the consumer about the value of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to all EU consumers, IFA president Joe Healy has said.

“If you ask anyone about CAP, they think it’s a benefit for farmers,” he told an AIB agri-market outlook event at the Tullamore Show on Sunday.

Huge benefit

“The CAP is of huge benefit for every one of the 500m EU consumers. In the 1960s, when CAP was introduced, there was about 30% of the average household income being spent on food.

“Today, that’s somewhere between 10% and 15% depending on the country you’re living in.

“That highlights the fact that your average European consumer mightn’t be from a farm, might be a lot more generations removed from it.

Ireland is a rural country and the best way of getting support into rural areas was through the CAP

“They’re getting a good deal from CAP because what it has is compensated farmers to produce and sell product below the cost of production, but top-quality, safe, traceable product that’s produced to the highest standards in the world. So CAP has been good for all Europeans,” he said.

“[CAP] is very important. Ireland is a rural country and the best way of getting support into rural areas was through the CAP.”

Also speaking on CAP reform was Irish MEP and first vice-president of the European Parliament Mairead McGuinness.

Net contributor

“Ireland is a net contributor to the EU budget and the Taoiseach has said that we as a country are prepared to pay more into the EU budget, depending on where it’s spent,” she said.

“So we would want more support for agriculture. There are a number of countries that want to pay less.

“I think that the lobbying that the farm organisations do needs to target those countries and their farm organisations to put pressure on their governments and persuade them of the value of sending money centrally and funding agriculture,” she said.

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