European farmers could receive greater financial support in the future to help them grow more food, following a recommendation to increase the size of the CAP budget.
Agriculture commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski said the Covid-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine had demonstrated how quickly food security in a system reliant on imports could be jeopardised.
See also: Farm leaders warn of huge contraction in UK food production
Although the EU currently has one of the world’s biggest farm subsidy programmes, worth €270bn (£235bn) and accounting for about one-third of the total EU budget, it is clearly not enough to safeguard food security, Mr Wojciechowski said.
“In the long term, it will be impossible to ensure food security with such a small budget,” he said in an interview with the EU Commission news service Euractiv.
Mr Wojciechowski said the CAP budget accounted for just 0.4% of the trade bloc’s GDP and he contrasted that with the 2% military spend.
Farmers had been forced to rely on the EU’s crisis fund, which had been triggered by events and would likely be active again next year.
But the fund fell short of what was needed. “This is only €500m, which is about only €3/ha of the farmland in the EU,” Mr Wojciechowski stressed.
It is not enough to support farmers through tough times and there is also a lack of tools within the CAP to cope with any future crises, he added.
Instead, he called for a stronger CAP, focused on farmers for the period after 2027.
“The CAP budget should be, first of all, a budget for the farmers,” Mr Wojciechowski said.
“I am generally against spending money from CAP for other targets not directly for farmers.”
Existing CAP support was spread too thinly because of the EU’s flagship Farm to Fork food strategy, he added.
Rural development measures, currently funded by the CAP, should be part-funded by other relevant budgets to free up payments for food production, Mr Wojciechowski concluded.
