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LAST MONTH, MINISTER for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue announced details of new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) funding allocations for agricultural schemes for the upcoming 2023-2027 period.
Speaking at a press conference alongside the Taoiseach, he announced an allocation of €2.3 billion in national funding to be made available over the 2023-2027 period. Over €1.56 billion of this will come directly from the European Union (EU) CAP budget.
This brings the total funding for the plan for the 2023-2027 period to €9.8 billion.
McConalogue also said the agricultural sector will have “really ambitious targets” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“The announcement today is a real commitment to our farm families. It will support our farmers in doing what they do best – produce top class, world famous food while helping them make a real impact in meeting our climate ambitions,” he said.
The announcement comes three years after the European Commission launched its proposals on the reform of the CAP.
The Department of Agriculture released a draft plan in September following ongoing public consultations with stakeholders to allow them to outline their views.
In June, EU member states and the European Parliament agreed on a major reform of farming subsidies after NGOs criticised it for not being “green” enough.
This reform will include a number of new measures to try and make farming a more sustainable industry on the whole.
The reaction has been mixed: one farmer told The Journal that the changes are needed, but that it involves too many small-scale reforms and needs to be more coherent and ambitious.
But what exactly is the CAP, and what will the latest green changes mean for farmers in Ireland?
What is the CAP?
Farmers across the EU have benefitted from the CAP since its creation in 1962. It is the longest-serving EU policy, making up more than a third of its overall budget, and is implemented in all 28 member states.
According to the European Commission, its aim is to “help provide a decent standard of living for European farmers and agricultural workers” and a “stable, varied and safe food supply for the citizens of all member states”.
The CAP is made up of two funds, which are often referred to as the “two pillars” of the CAP.
The first pillar, the European agricultural guarantee fund (EAGF), has an allocation of €291.1 billion. Up to €270 billion of this is provided for income support schemes, with the remainder dedicated to supporting agricultural markets.
The CAP’s second pillar is the European agricultural fund for rural development (EAFRD). It has a total allocation of €95.5 billion, which includes €8.1 billion from the EU recovery package to help farmers address the challenges posed by the pandemic.
There are three types of support included in the CAP: income support for farmers, or “direct payments”, market measures and rural development.
The direct payments make up the majority of the CAP. Over 70% of the current EU farm budget is dedicated to direct payments for European farmers, who are paid per hectare of land used for farming.
Market measures aim to support and stabilise agricultural markets, prevent market crises from escalating and boost demand for products.
One example of these measures is intervention buying. This is where products are bought and stored by EU countries’ governments or their agencies and then sold back on the market at a later date to prevent prices from dropping to unsustainably low levels.
The rural development section of CAP aims to do just that: strengthen the social, environmental and economic sustainability of rural areas.
What changes are being made to the CAP?
Ahead of the 2023-2027 period, the EU are reforming how the income support system will be distributed “to ensure a fairer distribution of financial support for farmers and workers across the EU”.
Under the new CAP, which will come into force in January 2023, EU countries will have to dedicate at least 10% of their direct payments to the Complementary Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS), which is designed to support farmers of smaller farms.
They will also have to distribute at least 3% of their direct payments budget towards young farmers, in the form of income or investment support or start-up aid.
McConalogue has proposed implementing capping of direct payments at €100,000 and reducing payments over €60,000 by 85%, resulting in an effective cap of €66,000.
According to figures published by the Department of Agriculture, 169 out of over 122,000 eligible farmers received over €100,000 in direct payments last year.
The new legislation will also contain a new, mandatory definition of an “active farmer” in an attempt to limit the subsidies going to large businesses and landowners.
Other objectives included in the CAP reform plan is to improve the gender balance in farming, and to boost the competitiveness of the agri-food sector.
What are the climate change elements in these changes?
In an effort to make the CAP more “green”, a number of changes are also being made to the policy ahead of the 2023-2027 period which aims to align with the EU’s European Green Deal.
40% of the CAP budget will now have to be “climate-relevant” and strongly support the general commitment to dedicate 10% of the EU budget to biodiversity objectives by the end of the relevant period.
At least 35% of funds will be allocated to measures to support climate, biodiversity, environment and animal welfare.
Mandatory requirements will also be stronger for CAP payment recipients. According to the European Commission, at least 3% of arable land on every farm will be dedicated to biodiversity and non-productive elements, with a possibility to receive support via eco-schemes to achieve 7%. Wetlands and peatlands will also be protected.
A “green payment” had been issued to farmers since 2015. Representing 30% of the direct payment budget, it was given as a reward for taking care of the environment under three compulsory practices: crop diversification, ecological focus areas and permanent grassland.
However, it was deemed to be ineffective in a 2018 report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA), which found that 65% of audited farmers did not have to change their farming practices in order to qualify for green payments.
“Eco-schemes” will now replace greening in the new CAP.
These schemes aim to provide stronger incentives for climate and environment-friendly farming practices, such as organic farming and carbon farming, as well as animal welfare improvements.
25% of the budget for direct payments, or approximately €297 million per annum, will be allocated to eco schemes. Farmers can opt out of these schemes, but they will lose a portion of their direct payment if they choose to do so.
The Public Consultation on Proposed Interventions lists five eco scheme proposals being considered by the Department of Agriculture.
The five proposed actions are devoting an increased proportion of land to non-productive areas, keeping within a specified maximum overall livestock rate each year, limiting chemical nitrogen usage, planting a minimum number of native trees per eligible hectare and using GPS-controlled fertiliser spreaders.
The proposal states that a farmer would have to select two of the five actions to maximise their payment, which is envisaged to work out at around €75 per hectare, payable on all hectares.
If a farmer selects one of these five actions, or selects two but only complies with one, it is expected that they will only receive a half-rate payment.
How have farmers in Ireland reacted to these changes?
Following McConalogue’s announcement, president of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) Tim Cullinan accused the Government of not being interested in supporting active farming.
“A cohort of our most productive farmers are going to be devastated by the CAP decisions at EU level. The Ministers own decisions today will do nothing to help these farmers,” he said in a statement.
“The total emphasis is on rewarding farmers for reducing production. The Greens are clearly running the show, with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael being led by the nose.”
The IFA joined protests across the country in June before the reforms were finalised, objecting to climate policies being implemented “without any assessment of the economic and social impact they will have on farmers and rural Ireland”.
At the time, Cullinan said that he has warned the government that “unless there is a change in the current direction of the CAP and changes to the flawed Climate Action Bill, farming in Ireland, as we know it, will cease to exist.”
Kildare-based scientist and farmer Emma Carroll told The Journal that it’s good to see the shift towards more environmentally-friendly objectives, but thinks that clarity is needed on what the outcomes will be for farmers.
“I think it needs to be a more broad picture of Irish farms, and I’m not sure it really captures that as it is,” she said.
It kind of feels almost tokenistic, in a way. It feels like they’re doing these little bits that help a tiny bit here and a tiny bit there, and it doesn’t feel like it joins up altogether to make a coherent picture of helping.
Carroll also said that she would like to see “a more farm-scale plan” that could be personalised to each individual farm across the different farming industries.
Nevertheless, she added that the reforms to the CAP are needed.
“With the climate crisis that we’re in, we know changes do have to be made and we have to make them as efficiently as we can,” she said.
“Hopefully with good negotiators at the table on behalf of farmers, I hope this continues interest around putting climates to the fore and supporting farmers in doing that, hopefully we can get to really interesting and really positive supportive iterations of CAP out there.”
This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work is the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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She could have offered to go into Govt to influence policy but chose not to along with many others who have zero intention of ever being in Govt cos they would lose their seats nxt election.
Boxer Moran did it, got a lot for Athlone but still paid the price. Easier hurl from the ditch.t
@James Gorman: Bríd prefers to jump on passing bandwagons. I have seen her interviewed on various TV shows and is always shown up for it… The funniest being the time she was on protesting the Trump visit (his human rights violations), when asked if she felt the same about the official Chinese government visit… She was not aware they had visited.
@James Gorman: The only thing that Independents or snaller parties have to offer the electorate is, acting as opposition to the government of the day and raising all the issues that it would rather not see the light of day.
When independents go into government with FF or FG it inevitably leads to a parish pump payout for their support, which might be great for their constituency, but it doesn’t serve the national interest or address bigger issues such as climate change or other international issues.
The FFG response to climate report is to increase Carbon tax… nothing to do with climate change.. all to do with creating another tax to pay the more than 200 billion euro debt that have accumulated… well done lads…
@John Bathe: Carbon taxes change habits. What’s your solution?
@John Bathe: give us your solution to it then.
@John Bathe: what are you solutions and who is going to pay for it
@Mickety Dee: no they dont. not when affordable solutions dont exist.
@Frankie J: Until our “leaders” (or whatever they call themselves) get their act together and start taking this serious, then it is pointless paying more carbon taxes. From the Irish Independent in Oct 2020.
“Ireland has to pay €50m to other EU countries after missing a renewable energy target.
The money will have to be paid in the next two months in exchange for help from countries that have exceeded their own targets and have surplus credits to sell.
That’s on top of an estimated €100m already squirrelled away to pay for missing a key carbon reduction target.”
The taxes will go towards paying those fines. We are not solving anything by doing that! Increases taxes to pay fines because as a country we can’t implement proper plans.
A pure waste of money and time.
@Mickety Dee: “Carbon taxes change habits”
That’s the theory and I expect you’re right to a degree but all we know for sure is that carbon taxes primarily hurt the poor and low wage earners.
@Mickety Dee: nuclear power…. we cant keep burning fossil fuel…
@Frankie J: thoroum molten salt nuclear reactor
@Patrick O Connell: thorium molten salt nuclear reactor.. us and the EU…money better soent than on “carbonn” taxes..
@Frankie J: also do ypu really think FFG are using carbon taxes for projects to alleviate climate change? Like fun they are.
@Patrick O Connell: also do ypu really think FFG are using carbon taxes for projects to alleviate climate change? Like fun they are.
@Will: There would be no wind generation in this island without carbon taxes and subsidies. Both strategies make uneconomic green options become economic
@Mickety Dee: wind is excellent power source.. but what happens on a calm day ??
@John Bathe: The excesd wind energy can be stored in pumped hydro stations. The trouble is that they are hugely expensive to build. We only have one in this country at Turlough Hill in Wicklow but would need several to be able to rely on renewables only. Until then, we’ve no choice but to use some fossil fuel based generation plants.
@Mickety Dee: can’t change the cold damp winters and the need for heating a home ,retro fit I hear you say 20or30 grand never get your money back and most people got fleeced with their mortgages and wouldn’t have to throw around any more ,what if all the new residents coming from all the warmer countries stayed at home there would be global savings on heating fuels there for a start ,etc
@Mickety Dee: No they don’t. They make people poorer and more angrier at being penalised for government inaction.
@Mickety Dee: if they did then ireland with the amongst highest fuel prices and highest alcohol prices would be among the lowest consumers of these products in Europe. Can you explain why that’s not the case?
@Gerard Heery: Installing interior insulation boards can be fitted by most competent DIYers, not a huge expense if done in a piecemeal fashion. Start with the rooms you use the most. The difference is unbelievable. Also double up on Attic insulation.
@Mickety Dee: just so that you know troII , people are already paying taxes on their energy bills. It is going to be tax on a top of tax.
We are also being taxed massively on fuel , on owning a property , on owning a vehicle , on owning a tv , on sugar , on tobacco , on e-cig , on groceries , on everything you can imagine other than water that got stealth taxed somewhere else. Stop troIIing , nobody is buying it.
@John Bathe: If they build the Wind Terbines off the coast like so many other EU countries have done, calm days will still have breeze off the coast
@Mickety Dee: no they don’t education does
@John Bathe: I wholeheartedly agree with the likes of a thorium reactor or Nuclear power being invested in, I also think that if they are going to collect these contentious carbon taxes then they should be used to start a nationwide program to upgrade houses insulation to a higher BER standard and start retrofitting homes with solar panels this would be a useful use of these taxes. They also should also scale up the charging network for BEVs.
@Mickety Dee: how’s that sugar tax working out?
@John Bathe: Turlough Hill. Off-peak surplus used to store water. No toxic waste involved.
@Alan Biddulph: windows and doors is where most of the heat is lost and they don’t come cheap
@Mickety Dee: I didn’t realise heating my home and commuting to my job 1.5 hours away with zero viable public transport options in the only car I can afford (so not a hybrid) was a “habit”. God, you’re right I should just stop.
“politicians 24 hours to react to the IPCC report is telling.”
Hate to speak up on behalf of the guvmint but maybe said politicians decided to read the report before reacting to it. It’s thousands of pages isn’t it? Even the summary must be a long read.
@Will: yes! Over 8000 I believe I read somewhere. Now unless they got a summary with key points or an audiobook they could listen to on the go… I would love to see anyone get thru many pages and be able to give an educated opinion on the contents of what they just read in that from my experience a very short time. Heck it took me weeks to get through The LOTR trilogy and I enjoyed that series the book rarely out of hand!
@Will: Get 10 civil servants to take 800 pages each, read it and summarize the key points. Then everyone meet to discuss. It’s not that difficult.
@Will: that Smith TD a typical left politician, make plenty of empty vessel noise to the uneducated to ensure a safe return to her big salary at the tax payers expense ,but of course no logical or practicable solution to any pressing issue facing our country. Why do we vote for these type of people.
@David Corrigan: nonsense.
@David Corrigan: lol. Sure that’s not that expensive at all. Jesus, you are a genius
@john gavin: They can read, right?
@Peter Roche: We have politicians with advisors and secretaries etc. What do they do? The public service has thousands of people working for them. Summarizing a document isn’t that difficult.
Sorry Brid. As a person who works in the renewable energy game your ideas are the same as everyone else and don’t focus on the low hanging fruit..think about the following
Irish cement are 8% of our emissions, Co2 capture and storage is a must here.
Biomethane plants required at scale to utilise foodwaste and animal slurry to create renewable gas, this will greatly and quickly reduce the agricultural emissions
All heavy good vehicles can easily, more cost effective and lower emitting should be on natural gas, then as the renewable gas comes available, you cannot electrify big trucks.
Have a Co2 footprint label on every product made, so the consumers can pick products with the lowest footprint, that would change the industries to product at lowest co2 cost
It seems everything is centralised around cities(mostly Dublin). Many jobs are based in Dublin and a large amount of commuters are from outside Dublin. Once you leave Dublin however, public transport options for commuters drops significantly, and most rely on their cars, and there is little incentive to not use a car, yet these private motor owners get punished for driving into the city. Its not always the cost thats a factor to commuters to shun the public transport that is there(train from Newbridge to city for example), its state of fact that there isn’t public transport where they live.
With that, I think its funny that their is a lovely train line between Howth to Killiney, and a dedicated cycle lane from Howth to the city, and these routes to the city are serviced by bus routes.
@neuromancer: Completely agree on the massive lack of national public transport in Ireland.
On the DART, though, yes, there is a coastal railway line. Be careful what you wish for – currently it’s just above sea level, for most of the year. I used to commute to work along that line and the waves were over the sea wall in winter. Nevertheless, all those trains kept running in heavy snow, while the Dublin Buses were obliged to pull in and park on the roadsides for the best part of a week.
This lady is an alien. She lives on a near by planet called Ireland. The report in question is to do with climatic issues on Planet Earth.
On planet Ireland, the wind blows constantly, 24/7/365, not for 50% of the time like on Earth. Every Kw of wind or solar has to have full, fast backup, and that means gas. It is is the duplication of systems, plus all the soft subsidies we pay for wind power, that make our electricity the most expensive in Europe.
Her other solution is excellent. Ban the data centres off Planet Ireland. Revert to seventies technology.
The other favourite, killing off half our cows, is again crazy. Leading climate scientists like Alan Savory will explain how vast herds of ruminants seasonally marching up and down the continental grasslands, were precisely the reason why our CO2 levels were much lower and desert areas much smaller in the past.
In reality, we are going nowhere on this until there is an acceptance of a mass worldwide adoption of Gen 4 modular, molten salt nuclear power. Invented back in the fifties, it unfortunately had two mega negatives. No good for bomb making and would have put the coal miners out of business. Moltex just approved in Canada is one example.
@Nicholas Grubb: Canada is also investing heavily in LNG with contracts of up to 40 years.
https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/our-natural-resources/energy-sources-distribution/clean-fossil-fuels/natural-gas/canadian-lng-projects/5683
Why are they doing this in parallel if Moltex is the answer? Genuine question, would be interested to hear. I’ll probably look it up anyway out of interest
@HectorPickaxe:
The US have invested 200 bn. in wind. Likewise the Germans. You thus need a very large supply readily available of gas for the quick fill in of base load. In the case of the US, a lot will come from Canada and in the case of Germany, the Nordstream from Russia. Great energy security there.
The Moltex (TCD ceo. ), is very interesting, because it is designed to heat up a whole lot more salt, which can then be used to help fill the gaps in the wind. The problem is, wind gaps can be six weeks, not just six hours. Remember 2010/2011, mid November to Stephen’s Day.
We need a couple in each of the peat stations. Then the data centres, each using three times the output of the Shannon Scheme. Then all the waste heat to the 24/7/365 grow house. Then the fly farms and the fish and the fowl, before using the rest of the bog for sequestration.
@Nicholas Grubb: Thanks Nicholas, interesting stuff
Presumably Citizen Smith is incapable of appreciating that, even if Ireland reduced its national carbon footprint to zero, it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to global warming. But, always the opportunist, she’s probably hoping that this essay will gain her a few extra votes from the Greta Thunderburger fan club (assuming that some of them are old enough to vote.) .
“Moving forward
As part of such a strategy we will need:
To create a State-led, controlled and delivered Renewable Energy company that can produce renewable energy on scale and on time (similar to the ESB in the past)
Massive investment in public transport that can deliver publicly controlled free, frequent public transport throughout the country and in all cities and towns
End the extraction of all fossil fuels and ban existing as well as future licensing
Place a legal ban on the importation of fracked gas and the establishment of LNG terminals
Change planning laws to stop the proliferation of data centres
Create Green New Jobs in retrofitting homes and public buildings, in health, education, public transport and renewing the natural environment.”
This sounds very expensive, it would be good to know if this will reduce global emissions by how many percentage points? 10? 20? 30? 60? What, you mean you don’t know? You mean it’s true that doing all this would likely only reduce global emissions by a fraction of a fraction of a percent?
Yeah, more looney left latte sipping green ideology. No practical real world thinking, all purple unicorns and sound bites to make them feel better about themselves looking down from their high unicorns
And in the naked light, I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence
@Modern Irish Dad: https://youtu.be/NAEppFUWLfc
@Modern Irish Dad: That’s certainly an FFG statement. Sound of silence very apt for them.
I am not denying climate change and it’s effects on the planet but I’m just wondering if the fact that these “natural disasters” are now always being reported in the medias might make things look far worse than they actually are??
@Frédéric Slimane: dont forget people deliberately starting fires. greece is notorious as you burn a piece of land and get planning where you wouldnt before because it’s now scrub.
this the gets out of hand.
the other thing people like living in the woods.
We’ve all read the statistics and when burnt acres become burnt hectares, it does seem worthwhile for countries afflicted to ask for international help.
I do not like Martin and I’d be one of the last to defend him, but I have to say this:
Lamenting about a 24h delayed reaction to a report dealing with a decades long issue (itself among hundreds of other reports, memos, analyses, and forecasts through the years) it’s political posturing & sharpshooting of the lowest kind.
It’s sad when people spend so much time and effort in an attempt to wave red herrings in our face. Honestly I thought Irish media cannot go lower than it did when covering the pandemic response. I was wrong, it went off the rails in the last 3-4 days.
It seems that the government solution is to tax the sh….out of us via Carbon Tax but that is not the solution. Watch what happens in the October Budget. Real and Meaningful solutions please. Taxes won’t buy us out of this. It needs a real conversion.
No one wants to go backwards.
There are science and engineering based solutions which require investment now (and without the necessity of short term profits.)
Nuclear fusion is getting much closer,
huge untapped potential in tidal power and hydropower
Some new prototype solar cells getting close to 40% efficiency
but probably the most important will be a world wide power grid,
If the alternative is moving to major urban centers like Dublin or giving up personal freedoms, the investment seems a small price to pay
have your say