Organic Food Producers

Organic farmers are right to complain about the CAP. In those member states where the Single Farm Payment is still distributed according to farmers’ historic production levels, organic farms are disadvantaged as they produced less than conventional farmers during the reference period. Moreover, many member states have no agri-environmental payments for organic farming – or they support only the initial conversion to organic farming. And even in those member states that subsidize the maintenance of organic farmland, payment levels tend to be too low. Conventional farmers sometimes get higher subsidies for complying with environmentally responsible farming practices that are both easier to fulfill than organic farming and less effective for environmental protection. Finally, other second pillar measures, such as subsidies for training and advisory services or participation in food quality schemes, do not consider the needs of organic farming either.

Nevertheless, three problems of integrating organic farmers in to a reform alliance emerge.

• They generally favor a large CAP budget. Among the reasons for this are: more money can be earmarked for organic farming if the CAP budget is large; with a high Single Farm Payment for conventional farmers, even higher agri-environmental payments for organic farming are needed to achieve organic farming targets; organic farmers are close to conventional (especially small scale) farmers and want to show their solidarity.
• Some organic farmers would like to introduce their interests into all types of second pillar measures. This would result in special schemes for setting up young organic farmers, for marketing organic food, for diversification into tourism on organic farms etc. While this organic twist would improve current second pillar measures, the best solution would often be to abolish certain second pillar measures.
• Many organic farmers share the concerns of environmentalists about the ecological harm a liberal reform of the CAP could cause (see here for arguments on the compatibility of ecological protection and liberalization).

What can be done to win the backing of organic farmers? A starting point is to highlight the ecological merits of fundamental CAP reform and to appeal to their ecological ideals. On a more material level, one might want to endorse generous EU funding of organic agriculture: a substantive budget earmarked for organic farming combined with high EU co-financing, so that member states actually spend the money. Increasing research and development for organic farming (possibly through a dedicated European Technology Platform) will also be helpful. Current public and private investment into sustainable farming knowledge is low, while organic farming techniques still need to be enhanced to cope with certain challenges that can be resolved much more cheaply under conventional farming.