Farm and land managers in Devon were given some instruction on handling a troublesome teenager yesterday evening – a teenager who will have a huge impact on all of their lives.
The teenager in question is the Common Agricultural Policy and the behavioural expert handing out the advice was Prof. Allan Buckwell. Director of Policy at the CLA, the Country Land and Business Association.
“Parents always argue about how to handle difficult quarrelsome teenagers and this one is no different - there are some heated discussions brewing up over the reforms which will take the CAP into its teen years from 2013 to 2020. ”
Speaking to the Devon Farm Management Association, Prof Buckwell, compared the CAP to the stages of a child’s development with the years between 1968 and 1992 representing the infancy and pre-school CAP when there were strong markets and prices and support was based on geographical borders. The CAP went to primary school between 1992 and 2000 when it developed into compensatory, direct payments, and during its early secondary school years it had to discover how to juggle with two hands – representing the two pillar, decoupled CAP. It also had to learn about the importance of market failures.
“Next we enter the teens – and that shouldn’t hold any surprises, we know that maturity is still some way off and that the clash of hormones is inevitable and, as with all teenagers, choices over its future direction will have to be made” he said.
Food security was, he said, a real challenge and one of the choices to be made was whether we supported food production or the environment or whether support should be targeted at both.
“The inescapable fact is that agricultural productivity has to rise and that will require knowledge intensive, precision land management. A strong common policy is essential and it must have funding resources to match the expectation placed upon it,” he said.
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