Hansen’s vision leak: ECVC demand fair prices for farmers, generational renewal, EU land regulation and new trade approach

ECVC looks forward to concrete action to back up the recognition that farmers need “better revenue from the market” and the Commission’s insistence that “practices where farmers are systematically forced to sell below production costs will not be tolerated.” The Commission must go further than tackling “systematic” purchasing below production costs by adding this practice to the black list of UTP directive via fast track procedure, based on article 170 and ensuring stringent measures to ensure the implementation of this policy, especially for small scale farmers.

The vision recognises that CAP support must be “further directed towards those farmers who need it most” and the Commission will “consider degressivity and capping”, which ECVC has called for many years. For this to happen, the CAP must also once again be used to regulate markets to ensure fair prices and a decent income, so that CAP support payments can go to support transition, the installation of new farmers, crisis prevention and management, and support the areas and sectors that need it most.

Mentions of food sovereignty and “agroecological farming practices [as] attractive options for younger farmers” underline the need for paradigm change, and these are two of the founding pillars of ECVC’s vision. An agroecological transition will be key in achieving the goal of ensuring “a future proof agri-food sector that is functioning within planetary boundaries”. The real definition of food sovereignty, as defined by peasant organisations and social movements, must guide the commission’s desire to “reduce dependency on imports” and move towards a “fairer global level playing field”, and not a vision that is limited to food security. European farmers don't want to compete with farmers from other continents. The priority should be to produce healthy food for local people, and not to export.

ECVC rejects the narratives of economic competitiveness and industrialisation that are present in the vision and are in deep contradiction with EC’s promises to farmers and the goals of vision itself. The vision insists the EU will be “more assertive in promoting and defending strategically the exports of EU products” and “use bilateral Free Trade Negotiations and Agreements to their full extent”, which completely ignores the direct impact EU Trade policy is having to drive down farmers prices and further worsen the industrialisation of EU agriculture. It is completely incoherent and contradictory to promote this export-oriented agriculture while at the same time promising to support agroecology and ensure food sovereignty.

With regard to generational renewal, “annual Youth Policy Dialogues” are not sufficient to ensure regular and structural consultation of young farmers, who must be part of regular policy consultation spaces. While young farmers may indeed be “drivers of innovation”, they do not wish to have digitalisation and fake technological solutions imposed upon them, as was outlined at the first Youth Policy Dialogue by ECVC’s young farmers. It is not acceptable that the vision pushes for digital solutions like “precision farming and data-based solutions” to “increase profitability” and “improving farm economic performance”, without any consideration of the potential social, environmental, and financial risks for farmers if they are forced to depend on, technological fake solutions.

As the vision recognises, the “limited availability of land in a context of growing competition for its use” is one of the biggest concerns for young farmers and the commitment to “launching an EU Observatory on Farmland” will be an essential part of tackling generational renewal. ECVC continues to demand action at the EU level beyond an observatory, in the form of an EU Directive on Land.

ECVC hopes that in the final vision that Hansen presents, he will push for a more concrete and coherent application of small-scale farmers’ priorities in EU legislative proposals and policy spaces.