A report, which calls for a major review of CAP payments, has laid the foundations for the future of farming and food in the EU, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has said.

The final report of the strategic dialogue on the future of EU agriculture, recommended that CAP payments are better targeted at small or mixed farms, young farmers, new entrants and those farming in areas of natural constraint.

This report claims that the EU needs to move away from the current system of area-based CAP payments and divert income supports to the farmers “who need it most”.

The report said that this approach would prevent farm abandonment and leave farmers better placed to secure a “decent income” for their efforts.

Task force

It states that an independent task force is needed to evaluate payment redistribution, capping and eligibility criteria under CAP, suggesting that the results of the task force’s work should be made available before the end of the post-2027 CAP reform.

The strategic dialogue on the future of farming was announced by von der Leyen last September and pitched as a means of finding common ground between farm and environmental groups.

Recommendations

The new Commission is to consider the group’s 14 recommendations and respond with a “new vision” for EU agriculture within the first 100 days of its mandate, which will coincide with the opening of the debate on post-2027 CAP reform.

The new report also calls for measures to be brought forward which ensure that farmers can make “decent revenues from the market” without having to “systematically sell their products below production costs”.

It seeks a reform of the agricultural reserve to increase the farming sector’s readiness to respond to crisis scenarios, such as animal diseases or extreme weather events.

Also recommended in the final report is the establishment of a European observatory for agricultural land, which would monitor prices and transfer trends in the land market.