The agriculture sector has great potential to reduce its GHG emissions in a cost-effective way, with limited or no production impacts, as well as gain efficiency and deliver environmental benefits in the process. However, to play and enhanced role in delivering the EU’s climate objectives requires commitment from both Member States and the agricultural sector.

RISE Foundation project outlines new thinking on the further modernisation of the CAP

Key messages from the DG AGRI Outlook conference 2016.

Ecological Focus Areas are intended to safeguard and improve biodiversity on arable farms in the EU. What evidence is there that they are actually delivering biodiversity on farmland?

As governments from all EU Member States but the UK gathered on Friday 16 September in Bratislava to discuss the future of the European Union, a similar agriculture-focused gathering was held in Chambord, France, on 2 September 2016.

David Baldock sets out his view on the Cork 2 conference which he and others at IEEP attended and about what this might mean for the future of rural development policy.

The Land Use Policy Group (LUPG) of the UK conservation agencies have published a report, written by IEEP, setting out the way in which a range of Member States have chosen to implement certain aspects of Pillar 1, including key elements of greening and the treatment of ineligible features and minimum activity requirements for farmers. It highlights the potential environmental implications of some of these choices and suggests a number of ways in which the environmental performance of greening could be improved.

A significant injection of money was agreed for ‘green’ farming practices under the recent CAP reform. This report examines the environmental impact these measures are likely to have on the ground and concludes that Member States’ implementation choices appear to have much diminished the chances of the greening measures delivering significant additional environmental benefits.

Details of Member State decisions on aspects of Pillar 1 implementation are now available on the website of DG Agriculture and Rural Development. The information provided is a summary of the notifications provided by Member States to the Commission and represents the state of play as at 23 January 2015. It covers the basic payment (or Single Area Payment); the greening measures; the redistributive payment; support in areas with natural constraints; and coupled support. In addition the decisions made by Member States on transferring funding between Pillars are outlined.

While the CAP reform debate is in full swing, the UK countries have been consulting on the structure and content of their future agricultural policies as part of the transition away from the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

30 actions to transform the Commission’s proposals into a genuine transition tool.

Just a few days before EU Agriculture Ministers meet for the informal Council in Vienna and on the basis of the preparatory questions sent by the presidency to the delegations, the authors of this blog post identify the key elements for securing vibrant rural areas in the future CAP.

Those of us with long memories of CAP reforms know that there can be many dramas, dead ends and diversions along the way. Nonetheless, there has been a discernible direction of travel for two decades or more.