Farmers with off-farm jobs face battle to avoid exclusion from CAP

Part-time farmers could face some form of a check on their levels of farm output to avail of CAP income supports as part of the European Commission’s plans to stop the funnelling of CAP funds to armchair farmers who face “no requirement to produce”.

The exact checks that will determine whether a farmer who works off-farm will likely be determined at national level for the 2028-2034 CAP but the Commission is eager to leave its stamp on future payment eligibility rules to ensure they primarily target funds to those who derive the majority of their income from farming.

The Commission’s draft proposals for the next CAP seek to limit income supports to those “whose principal activity is agriculture,” with the allowance for some, still undefined exceptions for small farmers and part-time farmers.

“When the Commission makes a legal proposal it is very serious so we are not just playing around with ideas,” a senior Commission official told the Irish Farmers Journal last week when asked on the risk new CAP proposals could exclude genuine but part-time farmers from direct payments post-2027.

“We do play around with a lot of ideas but this is a legal proposal. This comes to the heart of the budget figures and who has access to the money. What we have proposed is to say that agriculture should be the principal activity of the farmer and in addition, we have said that for smaller farms, member states can provide a rule that they can still have access to the funds.”

The official maintains that current active farmer rules in place to ensure genuine farmers can receive funds while non-farming landowners do not draw down from CAP in the “bulk of situations” – but that concern remains.

“There is a fear that there are people who are benefitting from the system and on whom we are spending too much money who are not producing or are too extensive to ensure food security in Europe,” the official explained.

The senior civil servant also expressed frustration that every time Brussels takes aim at those drawing CAP funds but genuinely farming, either full-time or part-time, member states roll back the proposals to such an extent that it seems like the armchair farmer issue can never be tackled.

“It is always very funny that first they say ‘I think that CAP should contribute strongly to food security’ and then they criticise all the elements we put in the proposals to actually strengthen the like between production and the payment,” he said.