AUTHORS: Paul Silcock – Ben Allen – Kaley Hart

The European Commission’s proposals for the future CAP include a provision for ‘green payments’ under Pillar 1 to improve the environmental performance of EU agriculture. The relationship between these payments and those available through Pillar 2 Rural Development measures has, and continues to be, a hotly debated topic of the current reforms. This new report by Cumulus Consultants and IEEP explores the relationship between CAP greening and agri-environment schemes. It considers the potential impacts on Environmental Stewardship and the changes needed to enable farmers to build on the greening requirements and deliver more sustainable and environmentally beneficial farming in England. A series of recommendations are set out to help the implementation of Pillar 1 greening and the redesign of Environmental Stewardship.

These include:

• continue existing ELS agreements to avoid unnecessary disruption;
• ensure any future schemes address both environmental and sustainable farming priorities;
• use the new flexibility envisaged within the proposed Pillar 2 regulation to integrate agri-environment schemes with other measures, to enhance their effectiveness; and
• secure sufficient funding to build on and enhance existing achievements and use such funds only to deliver public goods where there is a market failure.