1 Introduction
15.01 The history of farm support under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (‘CAP’) is one of gradual evolution. Farmers have been granted subsidies under the CAP since its inception.
In recent years the European legislation has been successively changed (in 2003, and again in 2013) to introduce greater responsiveness to market indicators into the subsidy regime, to enhance the policy’s contribution to issues of environmental protection, and to address questions of free trade in agricultural products arising in the context of negotiations for a new World Trade Organisation Agreement on Agriculture.15.02 Prior to the Agenda 2000 reform of the CAP, and its subsequent Mid Term Review in 2003, some agricultural support schemes were designed to help farmers with incomes below certain levels to increase their income, provided that the improvement plan would improve the income per labour unit. Alternatively, to counteract over-production of farm produce within the Community as a whole, other schemes were designed to reduce the amount of farmland used,1 to reduce production,2 or to help farmers leave the agriculture industry altogether.3 The numerous support schemes were brought together in the Single Farm Payment from 2003, under the terms of which agricultural support was decoupled from production and a system of payment entitlements established for each holding based initially on the average support payments under CAP support regimes for each year in the three-year reference period 2000–2002, expressed at 2002 claim rates.4
15.03 The latest reform, the introduction of the Basic Scheme Payment, took effect in England and Wales in 2015, and is based on EU legislation passed in 2013. It is based on reforms proposed in the European Commission’s Europe 2020 reform process. The broad outlines of the Basic Scheme Payment and farm support under the 2013 legislation were described in Chapter 2 above.5 Support will continue to be organised under two separate regimes: Pillar I, which is concerned with market management and direct payments, and Pillar I, which is concerned with payments for rural development.
The new basic payment scheme introduces an enhanced ‘green’ element to CAP support, in that only 70% of each member state’s Pillar I envelope will constitute the Basic Scheme Payment, with the remaining 30% (the ‘greening component’) set aside to support environmental protection requirements applied to every agricultural holding. This reflects a move towards a ‘public goods’ model for farm support, by which farmers receive remuneration for the provision of public goods in the form of animal welfare and enhanced environmental protection. This development owes much to the ‘Health Check’ of the CAP implemented in 2009, and the subsequent Europe 2020 reform process, which started in 2010 with the publication by the European Commission of its proposals to reform the CAP in order to address inter alia issues of climate change, food security and the need to secure greater acceptance by society of the need provide financial support to farmers.615.04 This Chapter will consider: (i) the detailed requirements of the Basic Payments Scheme, the requirements of European law and their implications for the law of land use; and (ii) and the implementation of the basic payment scheme (and associated land use regulation) in the domestic law of the England and Wales.