Ringside seat to alternative agricultural policies post-Brexit

Irish farmers do their share of complaining about the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy.

That is understandable, mainly because of the complexity of dealing with the CAP. Even the EU admits that its agriculture policy needs simplification.

With Irish farmers operating in the CAP since 1973, they have long had nothing to compare it with.

They know it undoubtedly brought a new level of farming prosperity back in the 1970s, but they really have no way of knowing what life without the CAP would be like in more recent decades.

That will no longer be the case after 2021, when the UK will have completed a two-year transition after leaving the EU in 2019.

Then, Ireland’s four neighbours — Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales — may well each have a separate agriculture policy while Ireland continues to operate with the CAP.

It will be an interesting scenario. The EU is not making Brexit easy for the UK, partly because doing so might set other member states thinking about leaving the EU. But the EU will not be able to stop its member states looking at the UK in decades to come and seeing how life there goes on compared to in the EU.

For Irish farmers, that comparison will be telling.

They can look at how farmers across the border or across the Irish Sea are coping, with similar farming enterprises and similar weather conditions, but outside the CAP. Farmers in the member states across the English Channel can make a valid comparison also.

That’s a big change from now, when we have to look at New Zealand on the other side of the world, or maybe Norway or Switzerland, for the nearest thing to a valid comparison of EU farming with other policies.

What will Irish farmers see across the border or across the Irish Sea?

The best clues come from Alan Matthews’s look at the UK Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’s Command Paper consultation document seeking views on a post-Brexit agricultural policy.

In the capreform.eu blog, he points out that the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have responsibility for designing their own agricultural policies (which they do currently within the rules of the CAP legislation).

So the ideas in the Command Paper are solely relevant to future agricultural policy in England.

The most important change proposed is that the level of farm income is not a specific objective, like it is in the EU.

The Command Paper recognises direct payments cannot be switched off overnight and transition to a replacement system will be needed. It proposes to pay the 2019 Basic Payment Scheme in England, followed by transition in which direct payments are gradually reduced, starting with those receiving the highest payments, in order to free up money to help the industry to prepare for the future, and to pilot new environmental land management schemes.

There is an implicit assumption that farmers now relying on direct payments for their income will be able to replace direct payments by enrolling in the new environmental land management system. The Command Paper recognises that farmers in remote areas may need tailored support. But using public money to directly support farm incomes is no longer an objective of English agricultural policy; instead greater focus goes on using public money for public goods — mainly protection and enhancement of the environment, plus better animal and plant health, animal welfare, improved public access, rural resilience and productivity.

Alan Matthews says UK agriculture promises to be a fascinating case study of agricultural policy change.

It will be fascinating for Irish farmers too.