CEETTAR, the European organisation of agricultural, rural and forestry contractors, believes that contractors should be in included in the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In a submission to the European Commission, CEETTAR said it believes that contractors are a part of the CAP value chain.

The organisation is of the opinion that land-based contractors need a dedicated role addressing their needs in the new CAP.

Representing 150,000 companies and nearly 600,000 workers, CEETTAR believes that agricultural, rural and forestry contractors support the use of innovative technologies. They feel that the new CAP should stimulate the use of technology by the beneficiaries, and not the ownership of these technologies.

If the CAP support continues to be allocated to farmers only, the contractor does not see its greening effort recognised.

Precision farming

“The added value brought by precision farming techniques and new technologies should be calculated according to the productivity of work performed by the contractor – for example in euro/hectare,” said CEETTAR president and German contractor Klaus Pentzlin.

This could avoid an artificial increase of the purchase price of certain machinery.

Provided that access to Wi-Fi in rural areas is developed, and that standardised data management measures are implemented, CEETAR feels that these new compensation techniques would easily integrate the contractor into the value chain of agriculture and forestry.

As the new CAP proposal is giving more responsibility to the member states’ authorities in the programming process, CEETTAR members (FCI is the Irish member) feel that it should be left up to the individual national governments to decide, in the framework of the eco schemes, whether contractors should receive direct support from the new CAP or if CAP should continue to support farmers only.