EU urged to promote 'territorial vision' of farming

Goran Šoster, representing rural areas in EU pre-accession countries (PREPARE), said the suggested "territorial approach" to farming would help strike a balance between environmental, economic and societal concerns, allowing everybody to get a "fair share of the value added" created by farming.

The "territorial agriculture" model would prioritise local planning and favour the development of food systems that are more environmentally-friendly, said Heino von Meyer of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), summarising a debate on the future of rural society. 

Michael Dower from the Agriculture and Rural Convention (ARC 2020), a civil society group aiming to gather a wide variety of opinions on the EU's future farm policy, also supported the move towards more territorial targeting of EU support, saying it would lead to the "economic renaissance" of rural areas, boost jobs and create wealth.

Joris Baecke, president of the European Council of Young Farmers (CEJA), stressed that the generational renewal of farmers should be a priority of the next CAP, as currently only 7% of farmers are aged under 35. Unless the future supply of young farmers is assured, the economic growth of rural areas will be in danger, he argued.   

Part-time farming was also highlighted as an option for further consideration by Guy Beaufoy from the European Forum on Nature Conservation and Pastoralism (EFNCP).

Italian Socialist MEP Paolo De Castro, chair of the European Parliament's committee on agriculture and rural development, noted that "many of our future challenges are related to agriculture" and referred to agriculture as "the basis for our social policy". 

Representatives of  local authorities stressed that rural development was not only about farming, and that therefore a new holistic and integrated rural strategic plan considering other economic sectors than agriculture is needed for the economic revival of rural areas.

In this regard, Jerzy Wilkin, professor of the Polish Institute of Rural and Agricultural Development, argued that agriculture needs to be integrated into other EU public policies.

Francesco Matino, from the Italian National Institute for Agricultural Economics (INEA), urged the Commission's departments on agriculture and regional development to coordinate their efforts on farming and cohesion policies together with national, regional and structural funds as well as other funds. "Rural diversity calls for territorially tailored policies," he said.

However, Thomas Bertilsson from the Federation of Swedish Farmers, who is also chairman of the EU farmers' lobby Copa-Cogeca's rural development working party, stressed that it is of outmost importance to ensure access to different public services and infrastructure in rural areas in order to boost rural development.

Access to education, health, broadband Internet, transport or postal services, for example, are necessary to increase the attractiveness of rural areas and stop the exodus from countryside, he said.

Speaking at the European Commission's two-day conference on the future of the CAP post-2013, President of the Committee of the Regions Mercedes Bresso argued that "to guarantee territorial cohesion – set as one of the political objectives of the EU in the Lisbon Treaty – we must strive to ensure that all the EU's sectoral policies are coherent and complementary. Before considering corrective or compensatory measures, we must anticipate the consequences that the new legislation will have on regions and local communities. This is why the Committee believes that all major reforms of European policies should be subject to territorial impact studies, including the CAP."