The hunt is on for common ground

There will not be much said, in the upcoming General Election, about one of the big political issues of the next three years – the need to write a new Common Agriculture Policy for the European Union. There is surprisingly little between Labour and Conservative views.

But moves are already being made by others to shape opinion in Brussels and Paris and Bucharest, not to mention Sandy, Bedfordshire, headquarters of one of the most important lobbies in countryside politics, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.

The RSPB has led the successful campaign to stop measuring farming by productivity alone. Because it has a million members and many more friends, the politicians listen to it.

According to our farmers, the result is that they are put at disadvantage in a hard world in which most people still care more about where next week's meals are coming from than they do about the decline of the sparrow.

Officially, farmers' leaders worry for the sparrow too. But down at the grass roots, most farmers think the birds can look after themselves.

All this goes some way to explaining exchanges between the CLA – the rebranded Country Land & Business Association – and the National Farmers' Union.

It is over-simplifying to say that the CLA represents the tweed suits and the NFU the muddy boots, but there is something in the caricatures.

They have members in common, however, and normally get on. Their disagreement illustrates the difficulties of finding a way through the political minefields to a new CAP. This was supposed to take effect in three years time but that deadline has been put back.

The CLA under its new president – William Worsley of Hovingham Hall, North Yorkshire – has given an unequivocal welcome to a report published by a federation of European land interests.

That's hardly surprising since is was largely written by the CLA's own policy director, an economics professor, Allan Buckwell.

It said the future of agricultural subsidy had to be in payment for "public goods". For example, cleaner water and food with a lower cost in greenhouse gases.

In terms which might have been cheered at a Friends of the Earth conference, it said the capitalist system had conspicuously failed to deliver the right balance between food and care for the environment.

And in the supporting statements published alongside the report, it was suggested that Prof Buckwell had recognised the militant vegetarian argument. This says that western diets are a significant contributor to global warming and that agricultural policy might need to encourage more fruit, veg and trees, and less livestock.

It's a point of view which exasperates the NFU, which does not see why its members should be expected to change the world.

Prof Buckwell has since told the Yorkshire Post he never said it. The opinion was added to a document he thought was complete. It is, however, on the record – an illustration of the difficulty of talking through committees.

However, Prof Buckwell is telling his members they have to care about their carbon emissions. And even minus the disputed comments, his report marked an important and deliberate re-alignment of position for the CLA and its European partners.

To underline its significance, the European Landowners Organisation shared a platform with Birdlife International in Brussels to present a joint vision of the future CAP. And the CLA and RSPB said their "hear hears" from London. It was like Tom and Jerry uniting for world peace.

Both sides agreed the reformed CAP should "show more characteristics of current rural development and agri-environment measures than current farm support measures".

They supported "food security" as an aim but said it could be interpreted as "ensuring the environmental sustainability of farming".

All this was carefully worded dynamite – acceptance, in effect, that the politicians have got it roughly right and environmental stewardship, rather than food production, is the way to go.

For its part, the NFU sees political concern about "food security" as an opportunity to hang on to its present subsidy, Single Farm Payments. These are what remains of the old Common Market system and although they have been "decoupled", in the jargon, from food production, they effectively subsidise the old shape of farming.

Yet without them, a lot of beef and lamb and milk producers would be losing money. And the NFU thinks voters and politicians want continuity of British supply in all sectors.

The landowner/birdlover rapport subverted that line of attack and NFU president Peter Kendall spoke scathingly of "a policy more suited to land-managers than active farmers". His chief economist, Tom Hind, called it "naive".

There was also some cynicism about the landowners' position. They say that in the countryside they envisage, subsidy would still be required for "extensive livestock and other High Nature Value systems".

That means their grouse moors as well as things like upland sheep farming.

Prof Buckwell has done some explaining in an essay where he wrote: "Three actions will be taken with respect to the Single Payments: to cut them, redistribute them and transform their purpose. The order is critical." If the cuts came first, he says, the money would not come back again. A new purpose must be agreed first.

He told the Yorkshire Post, he said he did not disagree with the NFU aim of wanting to keep as much money as possible in what the Eurocrats call "Pillar One" of the CAP – that is, cash paid direct to farmers, as opposed to Pillar Two which are are funds for more general rural development.

But he argues the whole pot would shrink unless it had an aim other than subsidising food. The political mood is clearly against continuing protection for European farmers, he says, whereas improving Third World productivity is seen as a win-win answer to the looming gap between food production and population.

For Prof Buckwell's essay in full see www.andersons. co.uk/publications.htm/