AS THE evenings shrink and the new school term looms, it is clear autumn is just around the corner. This is normally when debate turns to what the coming months will bring in Brussels. But the closer we get to Brexit, the less relevant that agricultural debate is to farmers here.
With the date when we leave the EU now just over 18 months away, we are increasingly on a separate track to the rest of the EU. Come the end of March 2019, when Brexit happens, they will become the EU-27 and the debate between now and then will be around two issues. Those are what UK policy will replace the CAP, and the trading and other relationships we will have with the EU-27.
As to the EU, the autumn focus, under Estonia's first EU presidency, will be on risk management tools as part of the post-2020 CAP.
Ironically this would have been the UK presidency, but that was given up because of Brexit. This would have given the UK a prime role in reshaping the CAP, but it is no longer part of that debate. The EU is under pressure from a number of member states and from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to develop a good risk management policy. This is being seen within the EU-27 as a way to cope with a CAP budget that will be dramatically reduced without the UK contribution. For the OECD it is a mechanism to move away from the trade distorting impact of direct payments, particularly in the livestock sector.
Come the autumn, the farming lobby will be impatient for progress on the development of a new farm support plan for the UK. The CAP will be replaced in 2020, and the EU is effectively a full year ahead of the UK in coming up with a plan. It has had its policy options and a public consultation and the shape of the final proposal will soon emerge. That is a process yet to begin in the UK. We know now that Michael Gove wants to link farm support to delivery of environmental objectives.
That has always been part of the CAP, in the shape of the concept of good farming practice, with the addition of greening. Gove's ideas look sound, but farmers need to see the details.
As an industry, farming has always delivered 'public goods' in the shape of a well managed and attractive countryside. Farmers do not need a new set of complex regulations to do this. Instead they need a tick-box exercise to confirm that they have delivered what is deemed necessary to secure support. This will be different to the CAP, but the government needs to make clear to the public that, with the exception of a handful of countries, every economy in the developed world supports its farming industry. This is the price of a secure, cheap food supply and an attractive countryside. People, and politicians, need to realise that they either pay to support agriculture, or pay more on the supermarket shelf.
Away from the basic support model, there are other issues to be addressed. The farming lobby is frustrated that well over a year from the Brexit decision we are still like a team practising kicking before the match begins. The European Commission has an established route to develop a new agricultural policy, which includes consultation. We need this in the UK, ideally via the devolved administrations. What the industry does not need is politicians in London, most of whom neither know or want to know about agriculture, deciding what is best for an industry vital to the UK economy.
We need firm plans, rather than Gove thoughts and we need them on the table. Beyond that we need a big, open consultation, so that there can be a buy-in to a new policy by farmers and conservationists – both of which have a vested interest in a viable and thriving countryside. We also need more vision about where we will sell what we produce, whether the concept of risk management in the UK has been dropped, and more detail about where we will stand over EU environmental regulations translated into UK law. These and many other issues need to be debated. It should be a busy autumn. If it is not we will be all be in trouble, as the debate on the future of farming slips even further behind here, while the EU powers ahead.