The national CAP strategic plans of many European countries need to be modified to ensure adequate budgets and ambitions for organic development. In fact, current projections would not achieve the EU target of 25 percent organic farmland by 2030.
The organic food and farming movement IFOAM Organics Europe is urging national governments and the European Commission to improve programs and allocations for organic farming. In line with the recent European Organic Action Plan. These instances are based on comments to national plans sent by the European Commission to member states and feedback from organic farmers’ associations.
The CAP after all is a crucial tool for increasing consumer demand for organic products. It can facilitate investment in policies and campaigns for promotion and public procurement to ensure a steady increase in the overall organic market.
Strategic plans, more support for organic
Organic farming can contribute to many of the goals of the new CAP and is a tool for increasing soil and water quality, improving animal welfare, reducing the use of antimicrobials and pesticides, and revitalizing rural areas. Therefore, it should be adequately supported by member states, IFOAM reminds. However, this does not happen.
‘As mentioned by the European Commission in its Observation Letters, some countries lack the ambition to contribute nationally to the EU target of 25 percent organic farmland by 2030, both in terms of targets and in terms of weak interventions and low budgets for organic farming development.
‘Member states should incorporate the Commission’s comments to ensure at least continued growth in organic production during the next CAP period 2023-2027 and have a greater overall ambition in terms of climate and environment,’ says Jan Plagge, president of IFOAM Organics Europe.
In this process, the European Commission is fully involved.
‘The Commission should Ensure that member states improve their CAP strategic plans before approving them to ensure that the planned interventions provide incentives for more conventional farmers to switch to organic farming, given the benefits of organic for biodiversity, the environment and animal welfare as mentioned by the Commission itself in its letters‘, points out Eduardo Cuoco, director of IFOAM Organics Europe.
Insufficient budgets in at least 7 countries
The European Commission itself has remarked on the insufficiency of national budgets provided for the conversion and maintenance of organic farming:
– in the Czech Republic, Finland, Portugal and Sweden, the budget for converting to organic is equal to or less than that for keeping organic,
– in France there are fears of deconversions starting in 2023 due to the withdrawal of the budget to support the maintenance of organic farming,
– in Italy, as it turned out, the Coldiretta ecological transition bluff in agriculture failed due to a number of substantial shortcomings.
The three-card game
IFOAM Organics Europe highlights how CAP 2021-2027 diminishes the comparative advantage for converting conventional farms to organic farming, compared to incentives for adopting opaque and undefined ‘ecoschemes’. Instead, which, as it turns out, allow the use of pesticides and other agrochemicals.
It is the game of three cards, aimed at confusing concepts and diverting resources reserved for organic farmers and pouring them back to the very different audience of users of glyphosate and other poisons. As always serving the Big 4. In this regard, the European organic movement warns against the improper interpretation of overlapping payments, which occurs in several countries including Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Germany. Austria and Finland.
Some examples
In France for example, the Commission said that the ecological scheme for organic farming is currently expected to receive the same level of payment as theHigh-Environmental Value (HVE) ecological scheme. Although the latter provides entirely inferior environmental benefits, as noted.
Professional journalist since January 1995, he has worked for newspapers (Il Messaggero, Paese Sera, La Stampa) and periodicals (NumeroUno, Il Salvagente). She is the author of journalistic surveys on food, she has published the book "Reading labels to know what we eat".
