🗞️ Kick-off 2025 with an interesting read: article on the future of CAP Direct Payments recently published by Tassos Haniotis 👇 The article discusses how the future of EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is up for debate, focusing on whether direct payments to farmers should continue or be restructured. Key challenges are considered, including balancing economic and environmental outputs, and the importance of soil health in agricultural policies. A shift towards soil-focused policies could simplify #CAP, improve sustainability, and better align with broader EU goals. Merging all direct payments into a multiannual system with a common conditionality targeted on soil health could simplify the #policy and link it to broader EU objectives like carbon-linked measures. European Commission International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) Wageningen University & Research INRAE Thünen Institute WIFO University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU) University of Bonn Ruralis - Institute for Rural and Regional Research ARTTIC Innovation #ClimatePolicies, #landuse, #landmanagement, #agriculture, #organicfarming, #climatechange, #biodiversity
Senior Guest Research Scholar, IIASA; Special Advisor for Sustainable Productivity, ForumForAg. Agriculture is my focus, policy my experience, analysis my passion. Views expressed are strictly personal.
A recent Workshop of COPA-COGECA (4 December 2024, “How to structure and support the future agriculture policy in the EU”) provided me with the chance to contribute with presentations focusing on the challenges of the sector (in ways that I have discussed in previous articles here), as well as with an idea on how the future Direct Payments could be structured (the merged presentations can be found here: https://lnkd.in/eidrYc27.) As a contribution to the public debate, I submit here my thoughts about the issues at stake and a proposal – one that I hope could move the debate from the repetition of general principles into a fruitful exchange of concrete ideas about how such mechanisms should work.