Be alert, but not alarmed...

I travelled to Europe recently – mainly for a holiday, but while I was there, I tried to get a sense of the trends in agriculture and particularly the public and political mood as it relates to farming.

The Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, has been the centrepiece of European Agriculture for 60 years. 

In my early days as a Victorian Farmers Federation member, I remember the CAP being demonised by Australian ag leaders. It was a nasty system of subsidies that distorted world markets and made it difficult for Aussie farmers to compete. 

Some years later, as part of a ‘gap year’ studying population shift from rural areas to the cities, I came to the view the CAP was as much about application of social policy as it was about ag industry policy. And today, that’s even more evident.

The opening paragraph of the latest CAP says it is ‘a partnership between agriculture and society ... between Europe and it’s farmers’. 

And there’s no doubt the European taxpayer has a heavy investment in agriculture, to the tune of 58 billion euro a year. 

Most of this – €41.4 billion – is in direct financial support to farmers. 

At first glance, an Aussie farmer might think this is a system to envy. But as you read into the detail of the policy, it’s clear this is not a free handout of public cash. There are many, many strings attached.

At the centre of the CAP is the European Green Deal and a key component of this is the Farm to Fork Strategy. 

Much of the language is familiar to us. Healthy food, sustainable farming systems, proactive response to climate change. All things we’re investing in here.

Dig a little further, though, and the commentary outlines quite prescriptive detail such as the ‘sustainable use of pesticides directive’. 

Under this directive, pesticide use will be reduced by 50 percent by 2030. 

Similarly, fertiliser use will be reduced by 20 percent by 2030. 

Farmers are required to establish permanent grasslands and to set aside at least five percent of arable land to ‘ecological focus areas’.

It would be easy to dismiss these policies as extreme and unworkable, but I think that would be a mistake. 

The CAP clearly states an objective of raising global standards in the sustainable production of healthy food. 

The EU will increasingly apply its standards to those who want to export produce to EU countries. That’s us.

And the direction of EU policy has strong public support. More than ever, consumers in developed nations are expecting farmers to focus on food safety and environmental sustainability. 

Recent articles in the Australian media are shining a spotlight on our production systems.

Farmers here can quite rightly point to the vastly different circumstances between EU farmers and Aussie farmers. 

We don’t have the benefit of a heavily subsidised production system. We have to evolve our business around the reality of playing in a competitive global marketplace. 

But the direction is clear.

We shouldn’t think of this as all bad news. 

The EU policy is already driving significant research and investment into Integrated Pest Management systems and more acceptable alternatives to mainstream pesticides and fertilisers. We can watch and learn from the Europeans.

For us, I think the message is to be alert but not alarmed. We can proactively engage with society and government here to ensure we maintain trust as an industry. We can continue to evolve our farm practices, trialling new products and developing new techniques. We can manage the reality of farming today but with a clear eye to farming for the future