ARC 2020 Report on CAP Strategic Plans

Last week the ARC 2020 platform published a report on the process of creating the National Strategic Plans (NSP) for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which are to be submitted to the European Commission by the end of this calendar year. The document includes a review and analysis of the Commission's initial recommendations, an analysis of CAP aspects in Germany (Green Architecture), Bulgaria (High Nature Agriculture), Poland, Italy and finally the CAP-EU relations with third countries.

Among the main conclusions of the overall report is the declining ambition of member states regarding the Strategic Plans and the CAP reform. An example for this is the transition from annual to biennial performance reviews of the plans; the postponement of the Green deal targets integration from an “ex-ante prerequisite” to an “expost appraisal” in Dec 2023, i.e. once the CAP Strategic Plans will be already approved by the Commission.

Another conclusion shows that there are any amendments that were formulated and proposed in a specific way, but have been further changed and adopted in the new CAP SP Regulation. Such an example is the case of GAEC 7: Crop Rotation in arable land, except for crops growing underwater.

Crop rotations are at the heart of the Biodiversity and Farm to Fork strategies. They serve to break pest cycles (reducing pesticide use) and increase soil fertility (reducing chemical fertilizers use). The EU-funded research project Best4Soils has proposed a simple rule of thumb to define crop rotations: “grow a crop no more than once in 2 or more years”. If this rule would be followed, the EU should not fund arable farmers who cultivate, for instance, tomatoes, maize, or wheat for two consecutive years on the same parcel. But According to the new CAP SP Regulation, the same crop (e.g. maize) planted in Year 1 can be replanted the following Year 2 on the same land parcel under the condition that a secondary crop is planted in between – or the so called “crop diversification” process instead of crop rotation. But would short secondary crop be enough to break maize pest cycles? Can crop diversification deliver good environmental and agronomic benefits equivalent to the crop rotations, or is diversification a convenient term to circumvent crop rotations?

Authors also observe another occurrence - too much attention is paid to the discussion of not so important details instead of others, which are essential for the overall focus of the CAP reform.

Read the full version of the report here:

https://www.arc2020.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/ARC_CAP_SP_2021_Web.pdf