An objective of the CAP is to ensure that farming can continue in all regions of the EU. This is used as a major justification for providing subsidies to EU farmers. In this article, I examine whether this objective is shared by some of those in Finland.

A glimpse of Finnish opinion is provided in a report produced in 2007 by a specially convened working group tasked with examining alternatives to the national agricultural policy. The group included representatives of the government, farmers, food industry and research and was chaired by the Secretary of State. Though not endorsed officially, the report provides a more informal backbone to Finnish government policy.

One of the report's key conclusions is to increase government support for the "natural and healthy development" of average farm size and their regional concentration, and to increase efficiency in the management of fields. The decoupled form of support provided by the reformed CAP is blamed for working against this "natural" development since it provides no incentive to increase production and therefore allows farmers to work the land extensively and still receive a subsidy.

As MEP Kyösti Virrankoski observed, Finland, by supporting the concentration of production in its most productive regions can hardly demand a policy which differs to that at the EU level. The government’s push to the regionalisation of production is contradictory to the EU policy objectives.

The report highlights an idea that farms should operate as business enterprises. This was read by commentators as "the days of traditional family farming are over". This does not seem to match some of the sentiments of the CAP i.e. a European model of production, of which family farms are a cornerstone. If these views are not shared at the national level, then where are they shared?

By following the above reasoning, it could be argued that a decline in the relative income of EU farmers is also a "natural and healthy" process. It is caused mainly by ever increasing productivity - farmers themselves are pushing their counterparts out of business.

Should society oppose this process? Definitely not, if we strive for "competitiveness" and regard efficiency in purely economic terms; and clearly yes, if we attach some other values to food production that are not shared, for example, in the manufacture of mobile phones. In order to create a prerequisite for special support to farmers, food production should occupy a different policy sphere to ordinary business – this is the idea behind multifunctional agriculture.

The idea of multifunctional agriculture, in the way it is currently conceptualised, was deemed as non-operational by the authors of the report since the "positive externalities [of agriculture] are too few, and negative [externalities] are too many". Rather, the use of market mechanisms for providing multifunctional services according to current demand and targeted at regions is advocated. If this ever becomes implemented, one should be particularly careful in allowing too many production-oriented farmers to escape cross-compliance requirements.

Reports such as this remind us that there is an urgent need to strengthen the environmental safeguards within the CAP. These safeguards would restrain the further intensification of land use and the simplification of farmed landscapes that would otherwise be driven by national policies for the "natural" development of the agricultural sector. It also shows that the idea of multifunctional agriculture is struggling hard to make its way through to the minds of politicians and farmers alike.