The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) select committee inquiry into the impacts of the proposed Greening element of the direct payments, has also been taking oral evidence in November. Our evidence, and other written evidence received, has been published. The results of the Inquiry, will be published in due course.
In the meantime, ORC has updated its CAP Reform webpage, with a new section providing details of ORC activities on the issue. This includes links to a review that ORC produced in 2010 for the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation of the European and other OECD experiences with agri-environment schemes in the context of developing schemes that pay producers for ecosystem services and public goods, which has been published as: Lampkin, N. (2011) Relevance of OECD agri-environmental measures for PES. In: Ottaviani, D. & Scialabba, N el-H (eds.) Payments for Ecosystem Services and Food Security (External PDF 11.2MB). Food and Agriculture Organisation, Rome. pp.45-67. Drawing on this work, ORC has prepared a summary (PDF 472KB) of the history of CAP and some of the key issues in the reform process from the perspective of the organic sector, which was presented to an IFOAM event on “Government Policies for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture with a Focus on the Asian Pacific Region” as part of the IFOAM World Congress in South Korea in September 2011.
