IFOAM Organics Europe regrets a CAP simplification without vision

IFOAM Organics Europe warns that the CAP simplification proposal presented today by the Commission is misguided as it will lower the environmental delivery of the CAP without providing more incentives for farmers to engage into sustainability initiatives. 

According to Jan Plagge, President of IFOAM Organics Europe: "This is a bad day for Europe's food and farm sector. The CAP simplification proposal is a missed opportunity as it simply lowers environmental requirements but neglects to grant a "green by definition" status and to provide a comparative advantage to farmers who invest in ambitious sustainable farming systems like organic. And lowering conditionality requirements without compensating with higher ambition for voluntary measures like ecoschemes amounts to undermining the environmental ambition and the legitimacy of the CAP and fails to address the real issues of low prices linked to power imbalances in the supply chain." 

IFOAM Organics Europe calls on the Commission to maintain the environmental delivery of the Common Agricultural Policy as a priority to be achieved by better incentivizing and supporting farmers to engage in an ambitious environmental re-design of their farms, that will make them resilient to future social and environmental crises, and to address the crucial issues of prices and income, notably by improving the position of farmers in the food chain. 

Plagge continued: "The objectives of the Farm to Fork strategy direct European agriculture in the right direction, and the CAP should implement them in a way encouraging more farmers to transition to sustainable farming systems. Today's Commission's proposal delivers the opposite: It calls Member States to engage into an environmental race to the bottom and encourages farmers to lower their engagement for public goods. It is crucial to ensure that farmers, especially those engaged in sustainable methods of production, such as organic farming, are fairly remunerated by both the market and the CAP for delivering public goods."