The EU needs to relieve farmers of the burden of red tape, said the European Commissioner for Agriculture, Christophe Hansen, on his first visit to Ireland since being appointed last month.
He is expected to set out his vision for the future of farming in the coming weeks.
“It will draw the path to a future, a sustainable future”, he told Irish farmers at the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) conference this week.
“Sustainable, not only from the environmental point of view, but sustainable as well from the social point of view because we need fair conditions and fair revenues” for farmers.
Christophe Hansen said paperwork is “not why you choose” to become a farmer. “There we have gone the wrong way…we really have to work on it.”
Public money needs to be well spent, but we have to make things easier, he added.
IFA President, Tim Cullinan, accused the previous team of European commissioners of becoming “detached from farmers and in many ways detached from reality.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was reappointed for a second term in December. But Christophe Hansen is new in the job.
He was previously a member of the European Parliament representing Luxembourg. He has won favour in the agriculture sector because he comes from a farming family.
Tim Cullinan told the IFA conference that he wants to see a “new deal for farmers” from the EU and from the new Irish government based around an approach that is “practical, flexible and grounded in common sense”.
The IFA president has particularly taken aim at ACRES, Ireland’s new environmental scheme under the Common Agricultural Policy, which Tim Cullinan says is a “headwreck for farmers” and needs a “fundamental review”.
Farmers’ operational cost have surged by 75 percent over the past seven years while farm incomes have plummeted by 34 percent, he added.
The IFA is also demanding a renewed focus on food production and to “encourage new people into farming.”
Christophe Hansen has made attracting young people to farming a key ambition of his mandate.
“We have to do something so that young people are once again motivated to go into this job”, he said. So “that it is attractive and that they can make a living out of it.”
The IFA is pushing for a commitment to retain a derogation from the EU’s Nitrates Directive. And the association wants to block unfavorable trade deals, particularly the one recently struck by the EU with Mercosur countries.
“We don’t want vague promises of ‘compensation’”, Cullinan warned, instead he insists on a level playing field for Irish farmers.