A new report, dubbed The Agriculture Atlas, calls for urgent EU reform to “damaging farming subsidies” in a bid to revive small farms and rural regions, prevent the rapid onset of climate change and protect nature. Published by Friends of the Earth Europe (FoE), BirdLife Europe and German political foundation Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, the report on the EUs Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) comes just a couple of weeks before the European elections take place. One central theme is for Europe to focus less on the biggest agro-industrial players and more on sustainable farming.

All three organizations demand that, in order to justify continued use of taxpayers’ money on the CAP, the financial budget – which currently stands at almost of €60 billion (US$67.2 billion) per year – is re-shaped to better reflect environmental issues facing agriculture and farming as a whole. 

According to the organizations, the EU Commission’s current proposals and the opinion of the outgoing Agricultural Committee in the European Parliament for the new CAP after 2020 “disregard the environmental and social potential of the CAP by far.”

Some of the highlighted facts and figures from the Agriculture Atlas 2019 include;

- Seventy percent of all subsidies are still granted without the fulfillment of goals including conserving the environment, keeping animals in appropriate conditions, protecting water, birds and insects, and maintaining life and livelihoods in rural areas;

- On average, more than 30 percent of the funds go to less than 2 percent of beneficiaries;

-  Three percent of the EUs biggest farms use more than half of the land for agriculture in the EU;

- The number of farms declined by 25 percent between 2003 and 2013;

- The number of farmland birds has declined by 57 percent since 1980

Barbara Unmüßig, President of Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, believes that the current farming policy is “highly inefficient, ineffective, and inequitable” and should be closely scrutinized because it shapes rural areas, nature and consequently, food. 

“Instead of mainly supporting the biggest, agro-industrial players the CAP needs specific instruments and targets which coherently support sustainable farms, which are the ones that manage to link healthy food, care for the environment and employment and thus better perspectives for our European regions,” she says. 

“The CAP needs to be taken as an opportunity to unite the European continent by deconcentrating and spreading fair and equal subsidies throughout all our regions, enhance thus social cohesion, provide the rural population with long-term development perspectives and reinforce the positive perception of Europe.”

Stanka Becheva, Food Sovereignty Campaigner for FoE Europe says that small-scale, family farmers are under threat like never before. “The EU needs to do everything it can to support these farmers who farm with nature, and stop subsidizing dangerous industrial agriculture which leads to farming without farmers.”