In Europe, we are in luck because the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) has turned 60 at a turbulent time for the Primary Sector due to the pandemic, the weather or the crisis in raw materials.
The CAP, which was born after the Second World War in order to ensure the supply of food and decent income for producers, reaches its 60th anniversary on the verge of extensive reform.
Six decades of lights and shadows, reflecting the evolution of Europe, with its agricultural modernization, on the positive side, but with pending issues such as profitability; the importance of female role; generational change or the balanced distribution of value between farmers, industry and supermarkets, and also degraded environments and climate change.
The CAP directs the actions of some ten million companies in the European Union and 22 million workers and has 387,000 million euros in the new budget until 2027.
A little history
Although there were previous steps, the CAP was born in 1962 in the founding states of the European common market (France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) and is now applied in 27 countries (after the departure of the United Kingdom). It was made after the food shortage after World War II, in order to rationalize production. Two decades later it changed, in the face of productive expansion and in 1984, in the face of surpluses, the then European Community approved measures to adjust supply to demand..
In 1992, the PAC was the object of what is considered the greatest reform, the so-called MacSharry, because the price premium policy was reoriented towards income support through direct payments. In addition, it is clearly oriented towards environmentalist agrarian policies.
In 2003, the European Union reformed the agrarian policy in order to introduce the current single payment “decoupled” from the quantity produced. At the moment, farmers and ranchers are governed by an extension of the 2013 reform, which included a “greening” or greening of payments, that from 2023 they will be greener.
The CAP culminated in 2021, which will be applied between 2023-2027, is the second most ambitious of its existence and establishesPlanesANDnational strategic ones, which implies more responsibility to the Governments.
A website for the celebration
The European Commission has created a web portal to report on its recent sixty birthday, where you can enjoy information related to the CAP both past and most recently, with information on the leadership of our exports, as well as offering opinions on different stakeholders.
