The recent CAP health check showed that current EU farm policy does not take climate change into account enough, even though "agriculture is part of the solution to fight climate change," said Paolo de Castro, chairman of the House's committee on agriculture and rural development, in a public hearing on the matter.
Stéphane Le Foll (S&D), French draftsman of the Parliament's own initiative report on EU agriculture and climate change, regretted that "the EU currently deals with agriculture and environment separately," and that different directives only create a lot of administrative hurdles for farmers.
Presenting his draft report, Le Foll called for agriculture to be addressed across the policy spectrum, using farm policy to combat climate change, tackle water and soil quality and sustainable natural resource management.
"I propose that we use EU agriculture to reduce fossil energy use, emit less and capture more CO2, and for sustainable management of natural resources," Le Foll said. The future CAP should be used "to ensure a transition towards sustainable agriculture that is economically viable," he added.
The draft report, to be adopted later this spring, currently states that "the CAP must be turned into an agricultural, food and environmental policy" and that climate change, water management, renewable energies and biodiversity "must be addressed through all the CAP instruments, not just the second pillar subsidies".
MEPs in search of quickest win-win solutions
During the hearing, MEPs were particularly interested to hear experts' views on the quickest and most efficient solutions to address climate change through EU farm policy.
"Politicians need simple solutions to get the message across," as one member put it, asking for expert help to define both the immediate priorities and the agricultural model the EU should opt for to get the best returns on investment when fighting climate change through agriculture.
Frank O'Mara, director of research at the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority (Teagasc) stressed that in any case "only win-win solutions will work," noting that farmers and the agricultural system also need to benefit from measures taken, not just the environment or the climate.
"We should not forget the profitability of farming," added Irish MEP Mairead McGuinness (European People's Party), stressing that if farmers do not make a profit, they will not invest in anything and certainly not in climate-change adaptation measures.
Policy recommendations
The experts listed minimum soil disturbance, increased crop rotation and well-managed pastures among measures to help store as much carbon as possible in the ground. They also flagged less energy-intensive input and more efficient use of nitrogen fertilisers as the quickest solutions with 'win-win' potential.
The experts said that livestock enteric fermentation is responsible for a third of the greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from EU agriculture. O'Mara noted that it is currently "difficult to reduce methane emissions" as existing solutions, like dietary supplements, are expensive for farmers and need further research.
He therefore highlighted productivity growth as a "key factor" in reducing livestock GHG emissions. This would reduce CO2 per kilo of product, which "is especially important if food production needs to be increased," he said. According to O'Mara, animal breeding is an important way of increasing productivity, but he conceded that more research is needed.
One size won't fit all
Meanwhile, Maciej Jerzy Sadowski from the EU Research Programme 'Global Change' stressed that "one size fits all will not work" and the EU needs to look to regional action to mitigate and adapt to climate change. The Union needs to adopt a long-term approach to increase the resilience of agriculture, link subsidies with EU environmental policy and programmes as well as breed new crops, he said.
Jan Verhagen, an agrosystems researcher at Wageningen University in the Netherlands, argued that "further regional concentration and specialisation of agricultural production is expected," as the need to produce more and better quality produce from existing land grows and the search for the best farming conditions begins.
Verhagen also noted that the cost of climate change adaptation and mitigation is "still not clear".
