Brussels – The influential NGO BirdLife Europe has called for the European Union to scrap its Common Agricultural Policy and instead replace it with a European food and land-use policy. The new policy would reward farmers for protecting biodiversity and using land sustainably, with critics saying the current CAP encourages environmental damage.
In its press release on CAP reform, the NGO states that intensive agricultural, driven by CAP subsidies, are replacing natural farming practices, thus driving climatic and environmental changes.
BirdLife argue that changing the current funding system to one where farmers are supported to protect the environment would also boost the sector’s productivity, in line with a recent report by the European Commissions’ Joint Research Centre.
The new proposed policy would include a temporary fund for supporting the transition to sustainable farming, and new funding instrument for building sustainable food chains, and anew fund for nature and biodiversity to cover the costs of implementing EU nature legislation.
For more information, see the BirdLife Press Release.
Policy