The Irish Creamery and Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) has told EU Agriculture Commissioner Christophe Hansen that the Common Agricultural Policy is "in urgent need of rebalancing" towards food production, setting out its priorities for the post-2027 CAP when he visited its stand on the final day of the National Ploughing Championships.

ICMSA president Denis Drennan said that among "enormously complex matters", a few stood "head and shoulders" above the rest: "All the questions around CAP post-2027 must begin with allocating an adequate budget an absolute priority, effective measures to control price, simplification and an EU-wide definition of an active farmer." It was, he said, "an observable fact" that the CAP had lost the thread back to its original purpose of supporting food-producing farmers.

On price, Drennan argued that farmers face ever more regulation, less support and no real measures against the "wildly price volatility" that is crippling them and that young people cite as the biggest obstacle to farming as a career. The second priority after the budget, he said, must be concrete measures that can deal with market downturns and end the "boom-bust" cycles — and if a fraction of the effort the EU spends on "micro-regulation of farming" went into that, farmers and consumers alike would be better off.

Simplification, he said, is "a buzzword at EU level but there is absolutely no sign of it at farm level"; farmers are "sick of false promises and false dawns" on the question.

The association's final point was the need for a clear definition of an active farmer, with its preferred test resting on a stocking rate of one livestock unit per hectare. Drennan said it cannot continue that food-producing farmers see their supports decline "while landowners producing little or nothing are getting larger payments". Joe Griffin reported the exchange for Agriland.

Source: Agriland