A leaked draft of a new livestock strategy the European Commission is due to publish over the coming weeks has signalled that Brussels sees the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) remaining as the key support pillar for livestock sector \u201cincome, investments and incentives\u201d.<\/p>\n
The strategy, spearheaded by European Commissioner for Agriculture Christophe Hansen, calls for a need to shore up the livestock sector\u2019s resilience to avoid seeing more of the EU\u2019s farmers exit in the years ahead.<\/p>\n
It sounds alarm that \u201caround 11% of the agricultural land could be abandoned by 2030\u201d and that almost a quarter of this would be mountain areas with little other economic activity.<\/p>\n
The document cites France\u2019s cattle numbers having already dropped 16% and Germany\u2019s pig population having shrunk by over a fifth in the last decade alone.<\/p>\n
Stabilisation<\/strong><\/p>\n The strategy suggests that livestock farmers require better access to insurance and income stabilisation tools that \u201creflect the specific risks of the sector\u201d.<\/p>\n It identifies market disruption, animal disease outbreaks and climate events as among these risks.<\/p>\n Future CAP schemes that offer \u201ctargeted coupled income and support for less-favoured areas\u201d should be focused on the sectors and areas \u201cwhere they are most needed\u201d, the leaked Commission document goes on to say.<\/p>\n It references the weak bargaining power farmers have with factories and states that \u201cstrengthening the position of farmers in the food chain and protecting them against unfair trading practices is a long-standing priority\u201d.<\/p>\n Tighter rules<\/strong><\/p>\n However, despite its soundings on increasing the competitiveness of farming across the EU, the strategy alludes to an upcoming revision of animal welfare laws, mentioning specifically the pig and poultry sectors. <\/p>\n The draft strategy says that the farm-level costs of a \u201ctransition to animal welfare-friendly livestock systems\u201d is anticipated to cost between \u20ac5.9bn and \u20ac8.4bn across the EU by 2040.<\/p>\n It pointed to these costs representing \u201cadditional annual farm-level costs ranging from \u20ac34,000 to \u20ac136,000 in dairy farming\u201d and over \u20ac400,000 for piggeries.<\/p>\n A reference is contained in the draft alluding to the Commission assessing \u201cfurther steps as regards export of animals for slaughter\u201d from the EU to non-EU countries.<\/p>\n This \u201cmodernisation\u201d of the EU\u2019s animal welfare rules provides an \u201cessential opportunity to introduce equivalent animal welfare requirements for imported products\u201d, the strategy says.<\/p>\n Nitrates updates<\/strong><\/p>\n While the strategy indicates that a tightening of animal welfare could be coming down the tracks, it also alludes to potential flexibilities around rules that have been imposed on farmers arising from the passing of various water quality and nature directives at EU level.<\/p>\n The Commission\u2019s draft states the findings of \u201cstress testing\u201d currently under way of these farm rules will be made available before the end of this year.<\/p>\n This simplification effort the Commission said could lead to \u201ccertain flexibilities\u201d that could be applied to the nitrates directive.<\/p>\n Agri-environmental schemes funded through the CAP should support efficiencies that reduce emissions, low methane livestock breeds and manure management measures, such as those related to biogas and slurry additives, the strategy says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leaked draft of a new livestock strategy the European Commission is due to publish over the coming…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1037464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5174],"tags":[24408,11330,112871,16212,285915,2000,299,5187,1699,27647,12,285916,285917],"class_list":["post-1037463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eu","tag-animal-welfare","tag-brussels","tag-cap","tag-cattle","tag-commissioner-for-agriculture","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-union","tag-livestock","tag-news","tag-nitrates","tag-noel-bardon"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116778817751121604","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1037463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1037463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1037464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1037463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1037463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1037463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}