As part of the so-called "health check" of the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the Commission proposed a number of amendments to the rules governing how farmers can receive subsidies. Among these are a number of cross-compliance measures whereby in order to receive direct payments, farmers have to meet certain environmental, food safety, animal health and welfare standards.
One proposal made by the Commission concerns the extension of existing cross-compliance measures to include an obligation on farmers to leave "buffer strips" between agricultural land and watercourses and to require authorisation for using irrigation channels.
The idea is to save water as global warming threatens to provoke increasing droughts in the future. The agriculture sector is currently the highest consumer of water in the EU at 69% of the total.
"We need to take out insurance now – by making agriculture more climate-friendly and less thirsty," said Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer-Boel, speaking at this year's Expo in Zaragoza on Friday 11 July.
Fischer-Boel said climate change is "pointing at us like a loaded gun, and farmers are in the line of fire".
There have been fears by member states that the EU's water framework directive (WFD), which includes obligations to improve the management of Europe's freshwater rivers, lakes and wetlands, as well as water pricing measures, would be included as a new requirement in the cross-compliance scheme.
But the commissioner allayed these fears, saying: "I firmly believe that now is not the right moment to bring the Water Framework Directive within the scope of cross-compliance" because these schemes have not yet been implemented in member states.
But Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) official Tom Jones said something has to be done to put an end to the current situation under which heavy subsidies encourage farmers to waste water. "Agricultural water use – primarily for irrigation – remains heavily subsidised, which encourages inefficient use of often scarce resources."
However, this position is contesded by EU agricultural association Copa-Cogeca, which stresses that "food, much like drinking water, is a basic human need and as such agricultural production must be given priority".
The Commission has proposed using 'modulation' as a means of reducing direct payments to farmers and increasing the amounts received for rural development, which would essentially 'green' the CAP.
"If we want to take more determined action on climate change and water through rural development policy, modulation is the only way of making the numbers add up," said Fischer-Boel.
