Smart Taxes recently made a submission to consultation on Common Agricultural Policy. The full submission can be accessed here, but here’s a selection:
Question 3 : Why reform the CAP?
The CAP SFP has created distortions in competition and in price of land in Ireland. It rewards those who built high production in the reference period and discouraged innovation and new entrants to farming. A level playing field is required based on current practices and production. Large intensive farming especially tillage was incentivised; family farms with high food quality, environmental and social benefits lost out. It was based on a fossil fuel and fertilizer model that is inherently unsustainable. Farmers and foresters should be better rewarded for bio-system and diversity maintenance. Remuneration was based outputs not real outcomes i.e. real improvement in water quality or increase in soil or forest cover carbon. A new CAP must also establish agriculture’s claim to food waste to close the nutrient cycle in a new sustainable CAP.
