The CAP must support more farmers and better food in line with the F2F Strategy

The CAP must introduce measures to reverse the disappearance of Europe’s small farms under the F2F Strategy to counteract the harmful effects of the current agroindustrial model. Industrial production systems that drive environmental damage, socio-economic strain, and human and animal health problems must be replaced by truly sustainable, diverse and agroecological farms that are adapted to local contexts, as outlined by European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC), in the recent update of the publication “More farmers, better food”.

ECVC calls for concrete directives and regulations to guarantee that Member States implement sufficient measures to achieve the F2F goals within their CAP Strategic Plans. It also insists that oversights in the F2F Strategy itself must be addressed to promote small and medium-scale, local producers, and ensure a holistic transition to sustainable food production.

Alongside reduction targets, for example, there must be a clear and ambitious exit plan to eliminate the harmful practices that currently drive the damaging and unsustainable industrial production system. This must be coupled with market measures and mandatory public procurement targets to guarantee a fair income for farmers and prevent concentration of market power across the entire supply chain.

By providing support to convert intensive industrial farms to agroecological management systems with integrated social conditionality measures, the EU will move towards a relocalisation of food systems and protect the privacy or autonomy of producers to make their own decisions based on their local environment and the specific needs of local communities.

In a recent video, women from the Austrian farmers’ organisation ÖBV also highlighted the importance of supporting peasant farming through the CAP. “A great strength of our small farms is a crisis-proof food supply through on-farm processing. We need a Common Agricultural Policy that values our contribution to preserving soil fertility and biodiversity, and which makes it possible for people to get into farming.”

You can read the full publication here, available in English, French and Spanish.

You can read ECVC’s key messages on the F2F Strategy here.

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