This week, the European Council, European Parliament and European Commission are due to agree in trilogue on the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF). If concluded, the proposals on carbon farming promise to have terrible consequences for European food systems, and thus must be curbed. This system is scientifically invalid and does not consider any of the concerns of small-scale farmers, despite our insistence with institutional actors.
Carbon farming won't work and is dangerous for food systems. Since it was announced as part of the the Farm to Fork Strategy, ECVC has constantly highlighted the issues with the proposal, alongside numerous organisations and scientists, most notably to the Commission and Parliament:
- The basic foundations of this mechanism do not help solve climate problems: soil storage is temporary, it is impossible to reliably calculate this storage, and there is near-zero overall impact. A mechanism of such importance must be scientifically validated, which is not currently the case.
- The requests and concerns of ECVC, as the voice of small-scale farmers, have not been taken into account at all by the Commission, and more specifically by DG CLIMA. There is a clear gap between the vision of the institutions and the realities of farmers on the ground. Institutional actors have rather been seduced by industry voices who are lobbying for greenwashing tools to tick the boxes of the Paris agreement with zero guaranteed results. Allowing private companies to pay agricultural actors to store their carbon emissions will give too much power to private companies, without requiring them to actually reduce their emissions.
- The carbon farming-based approach reinforces the gap between different agricultural actors, bringing disadvantages for small or medium-sized farmers, encouraging the purchase of land by external players, and increasing dependence on one-off and unfair payments, among other issues.
Furthermore, the decision-making process at European Union level around the CRCF has been dangerously flawed. The framework was built and voted on in record time, with no impact assessment and no thought given to the necessary safeguards (notably, the public management of the system).
For Vincent Delobel, administrator of the FUGEA (Walloon member organization), “We are fighting for fairer public policies and access to land. Carbon farming does the opposite by privatizing agricultural subsidies, favoring large farms and land speculation.”
As Andoni Garcia Arriola, member of the ECVC Coordinating Committee adds: “We need a real, serious and planned transition towards more sustainable, agroecological peasant farming supported by market regulation, and not false solutions like carbon farming, which paves the way for industries actors and agribusinesses to further line their pockets.”
Find out more
European farmers launch alternative manifesto of real agriculture and climate solutions
Contact information
Andoni Garcia Arriola
ES, EUS
ECVC Coordinating Committee
+3436451569
Vitor Rodrigu
PT, EN, ES
ECVC Coordinating Committee
+351966468055
ECVC Office
EN, FR, ES, IT
press@eurovia.org
+32 2 217 31 12