The European Commission’s plans for the next CAP say that each member state should create a ‘starter pack’ for young farmers that would contain numerous that levers could tilt the balance on the EU’s aging population of farmers.

The measures and payments included in this starter pack would be set out in a strategy that must outline the “current demographic situation” of farming in the country, the specific barriers young farmers face to entry and measures proposed to overcome them; and how wider rural development funds support young farmers.

The Commission’s draft CAP proposes targeting 6% of ringfenced farm scheme funds to young farmers, but said that this target is one that would be aspirational, rather than one that would be enforced in member states’ spending plans.

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However, MEPs look set to push for an increase in these funds.

Payments

One of the chief interventions planned to encourage more younger farmers to start farming in their own right is a top up to the area-based payment rate that will apply to the scheme that is to replace Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) and the system of entitlements.

This top up would function in a similar way in 2028-2034 to the current Complementary Income Support for Young Farmers.

The Commission has also said that the top up to young farmers’ payment rates in post-2027 income supports could be formed in part or in-full by a lump sum not tied to land area.

Similar to the debate around future farm viability arising from changes to CAP income supports for 2028-2034, the size of the overall CAP budget for income supports will be key in determining the size of these targeted payments towards young farmers in comparison to the current CAP. This lump sum addition to income supports has been proposed separately to allowing “support for setting-up of young farmers” – otherwise known as installation aid. Ireland is in the minority in the current CAP plan in not providing this type of support tool to its young farmers.

Further payment support options listed for young farmers in the CAP proposals are an 85% rate of grant aid for eligible on-farm investments and the opening of co-operation measures to older farmers with aim of encouraging farm transfers.

Attractiveness

The Commission has said that efforts to boost generational renewal should also seek to increase the attractiveness of farming as career.

The proposals state that funding for farm relief services can cover both the set up costs of agencies providing the service to farmers, as well as the wage costs of the workers filling in for the farmer taking leave for a “limited period of time”.

Sickness, childbearing, caring for children and family members, training and holidays are referenced as the reasons for which farmers could be funded for taking leave.

Coolness to retirement lever on pensions

One lever to stimulate the transfer of farms on to the next generation that the Commission wants made mandatory but which has proven controversial since announced is that CAP income supports should be stopped for farmers receiving pensions by 2032.

The list of amendments to the original CAP proposals formulated by Cyprus finishing up its presidency of the Council of the EU suggests that this pension proposal should stay but with the crucial difference of being voluntary for each member state to decide to keep or to scrap from its schemes. Member states look to instead be leaning towards making all member states provide a voluntary succession scheme for farmers who have reached national retirement age and who receive a pension.

MEPs’ chief negotiator Norbert Lins wants the proposal scrapped, with indications that a majority of his colleagues also want the plan dropped entirely, suggesting that measures focused on “intergenerational co-operation including farm succession” could suffice.

In Ireland, the pensions proposal ran into strong opposition in the Department of Agriculture’s CAP consultation held earlier this year as just under two-thirds of those who took part said they were against removing payments for farmers in receipt of pensions.

Who will qualify as a young farmer?

It is proposed by the Commission that a ‘young farmer’ should be defined as a farmer with a maximum age of between 35 and 40 years old – with the exact uppermost age to be decided at member state level – that acts as the “head of the holding”.

The draft European Parliament report wants the maximum age set at 40 years EU-wide and member states appear to back the Commission’s plan to let this be decided at national level.

All three look to agree that a farmer who satisfies the ‘young farmer’ definition when they first access support will be deemed eligible to receive any young farmer payments for as long as any relevant scheme sets out, irrespective of them subsequently exceeding the upper age limit.