The active farmer and convergence debates in Ireland ahead of the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) should remember the immensely different land ownership and leasing structures of other EU countries which will also have their say on the future of CAP payments.

That was the message from a former director of agricultural strategy and policy analysis in the European Commission Tassos Haniotis, when he spoke to farmers attending the Irish Farmers Association’s (IFA) CAP meeting in Naas last week.

The barrier to better defining the active farmer rules for receiving CAP payments has been around since payments were decoupled, the former official said.

Many EU countries see a far higher proportion of their farmland leased than is the case in Ireland, Haniotis claimed.

“This is a debate that has been going on since 2003 and the reason why can be seen in one simple statistic: an average of 50% of the EU’s land is rented,” he commented.

“This average ranges from about 15% of land being farmed by the owner in France to 85% in Ireland.

“The national differences make it extremely difficult to address the issue of convergence and the issue of defining active farmers with EU legislation.”

Intervention era

Haniotis stated that tying CAP payments back to output levels would not be the quick fix to ensuring funds are targeted towards genuine farmers.

He instead suggested that better cross compliance rules could help targeted payments.

“My view has always been that if you have a simple targeted conditionality, you have a link to production.

“One of my experiences from doing military service in Greece in the 1980s was trying to cut a chunk of frozen Irish intervention beef with an axe - at the time, CAP was linked to production.

“If you look at Irish beef now, it is of excellent, outstanding quality. Why? Because it is not linked to the premium requirements that see in the second May when the animal’s age goes over 21 months, it is turned into an elephant.

“I think you should realise that it is not actually the lack of link to production that is the issue, it is the issue of defining an active farmer and it is the issue of simplifying conditionality.”

“We should not raise any ideas that we want to bring the CAP back to its old times that were not always, and in every way, glorious.”