Sustainability starts with the farmer : a review of the common agricultural policy

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USTAINABILITY STARTS WITH THE FARMER

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REVIEW OF THE

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OMMON

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GRICULTURAL

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OLICY

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ASTER THESIS

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OLITICAL

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CIENCE

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NTERNATIONAL

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ELATIONS

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Y

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REEK

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ILLEMS

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TUDENT

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10469796

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UGUST

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2014

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UPERVISOR

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UC

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RANSSEN

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ECOND READER

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OBIN

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ISTORIUS

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Index

EUROPEAN FOOD REGIME 12

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 14

POLICY COHERENCE 14

METHODOLOGY 16

POLICY ANALYSES 17

SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS 18

CASE SELECTION 23

OPERATIONALIZATION 25

ANALYSES 28

POLICY ANALYSES 28

FOOD SECURITY POLICIES 29

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES 32

FAMERS’ EXPERIENCES ON CAP 33

ARABLE FARMERS 34

MARKET GARDENERS 39

GREENHOUSE MARKET GARDENERS 43

INTERVIEW RESULTS 48 CONCLUSION 50 DISCUSSION 52 LITERATURE 53 INTERNET PAGES 55 APPENDIX 57

APPENDIX 1:CROSS COMPLIANCE REGULATION OF THE SINGLE PAYMENT SCHEME 57

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List of Abbreviations

CAP: Common Agriculture Policy

CMO: Common Market Organisation (in Dutch: GMO: Gemeenschappelijke Marktordening) DG: Directorate-General, departments of the European Commission

EC: European Commission EU: European Union

CBS: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, Dutch federal institute of statistics. OECD: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

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Introduction

Only a few issues still need to be negotiated on until the entire 2014-2020 European Union’s Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) is ready for its release, which makes this an excellent time to review the previous CAP situation for Dutch farmers. There are several global challenges that the European agricultural sector needs to respond to, such as the nowadays well-known gained insight of the effects of farming on biodiversity, the increasing global demand of food and simultaneously the decrease of farmers and the lack of enthusiasm by youngsters to step into the profession. Current and future policies should take these important issues into account, yet in reality the offered solutions may lead to unintended results. As farmers themselves are a key part of the solution for these issues, it is important to know whether the CAP’s strategies on food security and biodiversity are effecting them righteously.

Farmers in both developing and developed countries are rapidly leaving their lands. Many articles have been written about why farmers in countries like in India struggle to cope with increasing food production prices (see Jacobsen et al. 2013 and McMichael and Schneider, 2011: 126-127). Their European counterparts however also have difficulties, as according to Buma in the Netherlands about fifty farmers quit every week. The Dutch federal office of statistics has seen a loss of nearly 30 000 farmers since the beginning of this millennium (CBS, 2014). Although Europe’s policy try to secure its food supply by transforming to sustainable agriculture, these issues needs to be addressed too.

Another issue of worry is the decay of biodiversity, which is a crucial element of international

sustainability politics. Biodiversity grants unlimited amounts of biological services, such as generating oxygen, cleaning water, spreading pollen and seeds and thereby providing us feedstuff, the actual value of biodiversity is increasingly recognized. As human population proceeds to grow, the harmful impact on environmental diversity increases. Globally, more land is being transformed into cities and agricultural lands. Currently 33 percent of the European surface is used for crop growing (CBD, 2014). The intense utilization of pesticides especially within large-scale industrial monocultures, are

generally considered to negatively influence biodiversity. This has been recently confirmed by a report of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which states that particularly

biodiversity developments in the Netherlands are worrisome. Due to the very intensive agriculture and the highest pesticide level per hectare in Europe, flora and fauna, like the bumblebee are being threatened (IUCN, 2014).

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While environmental issues matter, another challenge is the global population increase that generates an acute demand for more food. In order to provide food security on an European and global scale the agricultural sector has to be managed wisely. Agricultural intensification may

produce a higher output, but productivity may drop on the long run due to biodiversity loss. The type and scale of agriculture used in a country or region greatly depends on regulatory systems that together form a food regime. A food regime can be seen as a rule-governed structure of production and consumption of food on a world scale. These rules tend to be implicit and as such express practices embedded in social and political relations, structures of accumulation and institutions (McMichael, 2012: 282). When talking about Europe’s farming sector, the main institutions that influence its food regime are the WTO, UN and in particular the European Union’s own Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Although CAP has to maneuver through the trade and biodiversity treaties made by these transnational institutions, the EU as a large producer, importer and exporter of feedstuff has a major impact on the global food regime. Naturally, as these CAP rules are currently changing to the new 2014-2020 policies, a sketch of the 2013 situation may serve as future reference material.

The key literature about food regime so far mostly focuses on the negative effects of a global regime for small farmers in developing countries. One aim of this thesis is to add the perspective of Western farmers and their challenges in the current regime. By describing these issues the aim is to fill in the literature gap of European farmers, and simultaneously sketch an update of today’s European food regime. The European regime might have changed since McMichael, one of the key founders of the concept, has published his last food regime article in 2009. The year when the European financial crisis broke lose.

The agricultural domain is claimed by multiple stakeholders. During the negotiations for a new CAP all sorts of actors were involved. Besides farmer associations, there are environmentalists, food corporations, crop/seed protecting agencies, trade organizations, fertilizer organizations, EU member states representing different kinds and sizes of related industries etc. (Klavert and Keijzer, 2012: 25). In the end, these actors influence how a declining group of farmers should ideally farm and thereby protect biodiversity, food security and other (strategic) interests. When these interests (and the policies that represent these) interfere with the endurance of farmers themselves, the consequences may be severe. Farmers are no longer seen as simply food providers. Instead, they are recognized as public good providers, as they largely determine how Europe’s landscape looks like, in addition they largely influence the continent’s biodiversity. Another important factor of farmers is the

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socioeconomic function they have in keeping rural areas lively. Tons of villages depend on the income and production of the local farmer, as agricultural related industries often provide direct and indirect jobs for fellow villagers. While the amount of farmers decline, young rural inhabitants simultaneously move towards urban areas where they await better job opportunities and higher wages (European Commission 2013: 4).

In conclusion, both biodiversity and food security depend drastically on one group of very relevant people, the farmer itself. The strive for a sustainable food security and biodiversity therefore begins with keeping the agricultural sector vivid. This observation leads to the following research question:

How does the Common Agriculture Policies on biodiversity and food security affect the endurance of Dutch farmers?

Sub-questions

In order to answer this question the following sub-questions will be elaborated on:

What is the Common Agricultural Policy, and what does it want to achieve?

We need to know what CAP wants to achieve in order to see if its policy is consistent. Does the EU acknowledge the drop in the amount of farmers as a problem? And are there signs in the policy objectives themselves that may explain the drop of the amount of farmers.

What policy areas within CAP are directly relevant in promoting biodiversity and food security?

As the Common Agriculture Policy is a broad policy area, which involves much more than biodiversity and food security alone, we first have to filter the policies so that we can distinct relevant policies for further analyses.

What measures do these policy areas take that potentially harm farmers?

Measures like subsidies, legislation, market measures etc. encourages or discourages behavior among certain types of farmers and may trigger contradicting results.

How do farmers experience these policies? Are these outcomes coherent to its policy?

This question should answer whether the policies considering food security or biodiversity are coherent with Europe’s aim to keep farmers in business. This question uses the conclusions of the policy analyses to find out what kind of effect they have on actual farmers. By asking different kinds of farmers, we can find out what farmer is benefiting least/most of the regulation.

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Relevance

The underlying issue that is being addresses within this thesis is whether the EU’s balance between promoting biodiversity and aiming for food security may overlook the key ingredient of sustainability: the endurance of the farmer itself. The side effect of multi-stakeholder influences on the EU decision-making process, such as the demands originated from environmentalists and corporate actors may perhaps unintendedly harm the endurance of the sector, even when they botch claim to protect the sustainability of the sector. This thesis’ topic thus connects with the theoretical debate of whether stakeholder involvement may only improve the process and not its outcome (see Henle et al., 2008). The results will not only show us how, and what type of farmers are affected by sustainability

politics, it also portrays CAP’s real priorities within the issue area of food security, environmental sustainability and farmer endurance. The outcome further elaborates on the real lobby achievements in anticipation of the positions of the stakeholders when the policy was formed (these positions have been clearly described by Klavert and Keijzer, 2012). This tells us what kind of lobby turned out to be most effective, which makes this report a relevant addition of Klavert and Keijzer’s report.

The outcome of this report also contributes to the question what the current European food regime looks like. Some claim that biodiversity protection measures are some sort of green protectionism of the European market (Campbell and Coombes, 1999: 302-319). The outcomes of this report may therefore be a practical basis for further food regime theories.

In addition, this report portrays the current position of Dutch farmers, which makes it useful for future reference on the issues of agricultural sustainability within CAP. The interviews that have been held may offer a nuance of the figures that are available of the agricultural industry.

Conceptionalisation

This chapter describes the concepts that are used in this thesis. Its main goal is to sketch an understanding of how the most common concepts can be interpreted, in order to prevent ambiguousness.

Governance tools

Descriptions of concepts that derive from the policy analyses itself will be presented in the

operationalization, however on forehand we can already distinguish two subgroups of policy tools; public and public-private governance.

Public governance

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EU, and the implementation on a member state level. For instance, the Netherlands has some freedom in how they implement certain policies, but most issues are arranged in a frameworks made by the European Union. Both of these actors thus have a vast influence on farmers. They can

implement top-down rules, like legislation, and respond with sanctions to those that do not comply with them. Generally, international treaties limit the actions of a state. In this case, the Netherlands has to comply with European agreements, and farmers generally do not get a choice in whether they want to participate or not. These are thus top-down measures, which are always limited to their jurisdiction only, which means Europe cannot enforce rules in another continent, and the Netherlands cannot enforce something on another member-state (Börzel and Risse, 2002: 3).

Public-private governance

Another approach of trying to influence the farmers behavior, is similar to what Fransen calls Transnational Public-Private regimes, which is defined as follows:

“TPPRs are groups of governance organizations that set rules and enforcement strategies governing economic flows across borders. They involve public and private actors as rule-makers and –takers applying combinations of hierarchical and market-based compliance mechanisms using combinations of hard and soft law.” (Fransen, 2013: 4).

Although the concept of TPPR is normally used to describe those governance organizations that want to get a grip on happenings outside their jurisdictions, the CAP does have jurisdiction within the EU. However, CAP still uses a similar approach within some of its policies. Due to restrictions of farmer support within WTO agreements, the EU found other ways to pass by the treaty of the WTO by involving the private actors. In that sense, we can borrow a part of Fransen’s definition to describe public-private governance as the involvement of public and private actors as rule-makers and –takers applying combinations of hierarchical and market-based compliance mechanisms using combinations of hard and soft law (Fransen, 2013: 4).

Food Regime

To further examine what potential effects these particular Common Agriculture Policies on farmers have, it is important to first understand what the policy is about. The use of food regime theory shapes a historic context of why and how certain transnational policies originated. This partially explains how issue fields like food security and biodiversity issues have reached the current agenda. CAP is part of the local and international playfield of the food regime, on the one hand, it has to follow international regulations initiated by institutions. On the other hand, it is a large player in the regime. The description of the food regime concept and the current European situation offers us a

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basic understanding of its current position and the general areas of worry. After a somewhat broader introduction of the global food regime, there will be a more in depth focus on the food security and environmental aspect, and the European food regime, which is strongly represented by the CAP. The global food regime shapes a context wherein the EU has to respond to, which makes it relevant to involve the global regime situation.

A food regime generally describes the dominating collective set of rules that influences food production and distribution and changes strongly over the years. Generally, the founder of the concept, McMichael recognizes three kinds of regimes.

The first food regime describes the period between 1870-1930s when (settler) colonies like the United States exported their exotic foods to Europe, providing the European industrial classes with enough food, which turned Britain into the world’s workshop. The outsourcing of food production to colonies led to a substantially overexploitation of the New World’s soil (McMichael, 2009: 141). The second food regime describes the period after the Second World War (1950s-1970s).

Colonization had largely disappeared and the food surpluses from especially the United States were used to strategically support its informal empire of postcolonial states during the cold war. Food aid and subsidized wages were a tool to secure loyalty against communism. Development states took over the model of national agro-industrialization by using green revolution technologies and introducing land reform. Meanwhile, agribusiness expanded to transnational linkages between national farm sectors. Which meant that countries specialized in certain crops, which then became part of a global supply chain. One example is the transnational animal protein complex, where soy and grain are being produces in the one country and are used for animal feeding in the other. This can be perceived as a liberalization of food markets (McMichael, 2009: 141). One result was that the diversity of agricultural production within countries fell, as one started to specialize.

The definition of a third regime is still not entirely determined, as it is a changing process. This regime started from the late 1980s and deepened the international connectedness of the food markets. It also triggered a supermarket revolution, which is based on mass production and a well-developed supply chain in a globalized system that mainly includes processed foods. Those who are privileged enough can get fresh fruits and vegetables from all over the world, whereas simultaneously tons of small farmers needed to leave their land, as they no longer could compete with low global prices that resulted from over-subsidized food (McMichael, 2009: 142).

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Due to the large distribution networks, the current system strongly depends on fossil fuels. This links food prices with ever-scarcer fossil fuels needed to support the trade network. As global market prices rise due to the rising fossil fuel prices, small farmers living in developing countries in particular, run out of income as food prices are inflating, but do not receive a higher price for their products. This has led to protests by food sovereignty movements such as Community Supported Agriculture, Via Campesina and other united small-scale organic producers, whom claim to stand for ecology, quality and democracy in the agricultural sector and often pledge to protect small farmers. They describe food sovereignty as the right of peoples to define their own agriculture and food policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade in order to achieve sustainable development objectives, to determine the extent to which they want to be self-reliant, and to restrict the dumping of products in their markets. It still does support some kind of trade, but in a framework where trade policies serve the rights of peoples to safe, healthy and ecologically sustainable

production (McMichael, 2009: 147). These food sovereignty movements can be seen as another perspective on the issues of food security and farmer endurance as they seem to promote

smallholder agriculture. Some claim that these smallholders can feed the world and keep the planet cool. The food sovereignty concept provides farmers more freedom to decide how they want to grow their crops and tackle certain problems regarding sustainability and food security. In the past, the CAP focused on an industrialization of the agricultural sector, which forced European farmers to increase in scale in order to stay competitive. Although the food sovereignty movement originated in developing countries as these farmers were affected by WTO and EU policies. The lack of sovereignty may not only count for those producing in developing countries. It may as well be an explanation of the high amount of farmer dropouts in Europe itself. So far, the negative effects of the food regime on farmers have mostly been described from a developing country perspective. However, as Europe has obliged to follow WTO agreements and the liberalizing of its market continues, a similar problem may occur in Europe.

Every food regime change has come with reframed visions on politics, technology and future implications (McMichael, 2009: 142), which may be seen in these protests already. Changes in food regimes are largely influenced by a combined outcome of social movements intersecting with strategies of states and corporations (McMichael, 2009: 145). The environmental concern has grown due to important studies about a decline in biodiversity and global warming. Yet, while traditional farming techniques used by many small farmers are known for their sustainability, these farmers have been in a great disadvantage during the last regimes. Some scholars (Pretty et al. 2006, Weis 2007 and Altieri 2008) find the contradiction between the undermining of smallholders and

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promoting industrial agriculture an epistemological discussion (meaning, a perspective of how reality is perceived); although industrial agriculture is able to provide lots of food, it simultaneously

undermines conditions for human survival on a longer term by depending on fossil fuels, being accountable for about a third of the greenhouse gasses that cause global warming and it degrades soil because of the intensive use of petro-fertilizers. Other consequences of large scale agriculture is the reduction of cultural and ecological knowledge about working with traditional farming

techniques, like encountering natural cycles, as large scale farming wipes out diversified smallholders. The crops diversity makes the smallholder not only more productive and

environmentally friendly than specialized industrial farming (McMichael, 2009: 153), it also limits the risk of food shortage in periods of drought or the spread of viruses among a certain crop due to its diversity.

Traditionally, a strong actor within the organization of food regimes has been the state, which is still an actor allegeable to co-decide what happens in transnational institutions like the WTO. However, during the third food regime the state actors became less relevant due to a liberalizing world economy. One result is that the US centered food regime converted its national farm lobbies into corporate ones, which meant a further marginalization of small farmers by agribusiness. Due to the increasing influence of corporations, the current food regime is often called the corporate food regime. Market-centric principles represented in the WTO protocols of 1995 for instance are mostly beneficial for these larger players. Through the Agreement on Agriculture, the WTO trade rules stabilized competitive dumping of surplus foods by Europe and the VS, yet liberalizing agricultural trade via the opening of southern markets to (still heavily subsidized) northern agri-exports (McMichael, 2009: 146).

Crop development also changed ownership during the third food regime. During earlier regimes, crop development was mostly organized by the state. Now the private industry dominates the

investments in this area and most developed plants are meant for the further formation of industrial crops (McMichael, 2009: 150). Another element of the corporate food regime is that the world food market is now majorly influenced by financial institutions that have the ability to speculate on food as a resource, which offers opportunities for quick profits, but can increase the overall costs by sudden drops in value (McMichael, 2009: 158).

McMichael claims that food regime analysis is key to understand the divide between environmentally damaging industrialization represented by the corporate food regime, and alternative

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ecological practices that can protect us from future risks like peak oil, climate change and

malnutrition (McMichael, 2009: 141). However, this gives a general picture of the global food regime, in which Europe is involved and has to react on. On the other hand, it is fair to say that McMichael says that the concept of food regime is merely intended to understand the regulatory setting on a macro level, which means that not all food production conforms to these patterns. Although many producers are influenced by a corporate food regime, there is a substantial arena of food production beyond that of the general food regime (McMichael, 2009: 146). The next paragraph does portray the development of the European Union regulatory setting.

European food regime

As common food regime theory often addresses a global situation, which focuses mainly on developing countries and the influence of the United States, this section will specifically address European developments. One could say the Common Agriculture Policy is the most dominant regulatory force of the European Union’s food regime. Its influence keeps expanding as more countries join the European Union. Not only countries within the union are effected by its policies, also the counterparts abroad have felt the consequences during the years.

The foundation of today’s Common Agricultural Policies lay within the Treaty of Rome of 1957. After the Second World War, several countries started to work together to avoid the food shortages that they experienced during the war. It was the start of the European Economic Community, a

predecessor of the European Union. A corporation of West Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France and Italy adopted the first CAP in 1962. They agreed that the policy should aim for affordable food for its citizens and a fair standard of living for farmers. This objective was rapidly achieved but led to overproduction during the seventies and eighties (European Commission, 2012: 3). Those surpluses initially were stored which led to so-called food mountains, and wine rivers. Measures were then taken to deal with the overproduction. Export subsidies, that reduced the gap between the internal market price and the actual world market price, resulted in export to

developing countries. As the United States followed a similar policy, many products were dumped in these markets. According to McMichael, these subsidies were used to keep Europe in a strategic position of being a food exporter (McMichael, 2009: 143). This led to serious trade conflicts, which in 1994 resulted in new WTO agreements. Internal support, export subsidies and import tariffs for agricultural products were then made, meaning the European policies had to change (Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2012: 17). After negotiations with the World Trade Organization, the CAP started a process of liberalization. The EU became the largest importer of products from developing countries,

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which still had some political motivation. The access was given to the least developed countries under the European Everything but Arms agreement. These countries from then on received free market access to the European market.

In the time previously to those agreements, farmers were subsidized according to their production capacity. Besides the trade consequences the policy aim of production increase had other

implications. The industrialization of food production led to large amounts of organic fertilizer, which increasingly harmed the environment. The industrialization of the sector also decreased the amount of biodiversity, as many ecosystems that became rarer and rarer were based on a traditional way of farming (Henle, et al., 2008: 62) These and other reasons made the public more critical towards the agricultural sector (Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2012: 17).

Between the year 1992 and 2003 serious changes were made in the first pillar of the policy; instead of providing a price support, farmers received direct aid payments, meaning the link between subsidies and production was slowly being decoupled. Although, the WTO agreements had a big share in this process, the European Union also had to restructure its subsidy scheme due to the member states that followed after 2003. The farmer population in Europe has doubled due to this enlargement which had serious repercussions for the policy as the price tag otherwise would grow immensely. Europe changed to a system where farmers were supported but in exchange had to improve their quality and follow environmental and animal friendly means of production, this is called cross-compliance. Interestingly, most of the environmental demands were not even new. They already were norms and laws that farmers had to take into account (Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2012: 17). The obligation of the European Union to do so came from international agreements made during the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which launched the principle of sustainable development. In the last decade CAP started to focus more on food quality, as the quality demands of the public rose. Besides stricter quality regulations, steps were taken to protect traditional and regional foods. Also organic farming first appeared in the EU’s legislation (European Commission, 2012: 3). The tone of the policy thus changed from an industrialized, quantity kind of mindset into a more quality based and environmental one. Since 2000, the CAP also has focused on rural development issues. As rural areas are increasingly being abandoned, an active policy is needed to support these areas. This is arranged in the second pillar of the agricultural policy. When rural population and their economy remain more vivid, it also benefits the future farmer population. Member states and provinces can partially co-decide what the pillar 2 budget is used for, as the 2008 reform led to the article 68 agreement. This gives member states the space to relocate a part of the former income support

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subsidies to more environmentally friendly production methods, quality agriculture and the use of risk insurances. Meaning that member states differ in their implementation of some aspects of the CAP (Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2012: 17).

As the European Union increasingly opens up its market to products outside the EU due to new WTO agreements, discussions at the G8 and following the Anything But Arms principle, new challenges may occur. For instance, the sugar beet industry is extremely harmful to the environment because the industry uses heavy pesticides. As the Union has strict environmental laws, it becomes cheaper to produce the beets elsewhere. The biodiversity in Europe may therefore increase, as the pesticides that come with sugar beet production no longer harm the fields on this continent. The new producer country will increasingly see a loss of biodiversity on a longer term. Liberalizing the European market may thus increase its biodiversity at the expense of the diversity in other countries (Henle, et al., 2008: 63). In addition, the amount of food miles will increase when Europe continues to liberalize. The history of CAP thus shows us that during its existence the policy has had a main focus on guaranteeing food security, the perspective on that term however changed. Firstly, the CAP increased its food security by a kind of protectionism: heavily subsidizing the production of goods that led to an industrialization of the sector, while also supporting the export. Due to these measures farmers did not produce according to the market’s needs, instead the production kept growing. The consequences of this policy led to trade conflicts, as products were dumped. Also environmental decay was a reason why its policy had to change. Now the agricultural sector is increasingly liberalized. Yet, European farmers still have to follow stringent environmental and quality regulations. Meaning, farmers are still supported, but no longer unwittingly. Subsidies were disconnected from production, cross compliance measures like environmental and quality regulations were implemented.

Theoretical framework

Policy coherence

To analyze the effects of European environmental and food security strategies on farmers the concept of policy coherence may offer support. One can describe policy coherence as follows: “Policy coherence is an elusive concept that is easily understood but difficult to measure. In common parlance, coherence implies that various policies go together because they share a set of ideas or objectives” (May et al., 2006: 382)

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Although the definition shows that the concept itself is somewhat ambiguous, it does clarifies what policy incoherence implies; various policies do not go together if they represent an inconsistent set of ideas or objectives. We can encounter inconsistencies in any given policy area and they foster what implementation scholars have identified as implementation gaps but there is more at stake than just the effectiveness of implementation as policy coherence also relates to the consistency with which policy intentions are signaled by the policy targets. Policy coherence and policy politics are often intertwined thereby sending out confusing message to, in this case farmers (May et al., 2006: 381).

The scope of inconsistencies can vary; the uniformity of agricultural policies as a whole can be at stake or specific singled out agricultural measures, particular provisions for addressing impacts for instance, can be conflicting and everything in between. Burstein therefore recommends applying the policy coherence concept to multiple levels as the boundaries around policies are often malleable (May et al., 2006: 382-386).

Scholars say policy domains are established areas of policy that give meaning to common problems. These problems are often considered and recognized by involved underlying interest groups. The more diverse the involved interest groups are, the greater the issue diversity will be, that all sorts of issue niches need to be addressed in order to cover the policy space. In contrast, a policy space with only a few interests will force attention to a more restricted set of issues. Thereby imposing greater policy coherence or at least the potential for it (May et al., 2006: 383-384).

With fewer interest, the potential for a consistent policy increases. According to William Brown this was the case in the traditional issue focus of agricultural policy, where various actors were mainly dedicated to support further farm development. With such an issue concentration, the relevant consideration is the degree of interest concentration within a policy domain (May et al., 2006: 384). Yet, different policy ranges may still be consistent as long as they contain integrative properties that link issues with interest. Current agricultural policymaking gained interest of various groups such as the environmental and corporate actors thereby broadening the policy arena.

To decide on policy inconsistency we also need take a look at the degree of shared perceptions of policies and the ideas they contain for a given policy area. This is about the policy image and portrays the importance of a consistent image for issue stability. One way to understand what idea is pushed for, is by looking at the benefits or burdens a specific policy sets to subset a population. Also a positive of negative tone in the official documents that issue a policy can say a lot about what ideas are being pursued. Domains that carry a broad scale of issues, with competing interests and little

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targeting, will ultimately be relatively incoherent, a comprised domain with focused issues, greater targeting and no conflicting interests gives way to a relatively consistent policy.

On the other hand, when a domain is comprised with focused issues, greater targeting and no conflicting interests, the way for a consistent policy is way more likely. The agricultural policy in the last decades of the previous century has been supportive towards farmers than the situation we are now at (May et al., 2006: 384).

Overall, there are institutions that already have policies about coherence where we can learn from. The OECD for instance recommends that a common vision for formulating and evaluating policies is an important tool to develop effective coherent policies.

When promoting broad consensus building on specific issues, the chances on consistent policies are obviously higher (OECD, 1999: 32).

The EU and its CAP strategy also has some experiences with policy coherence. One example of an already known policy mater is the CAP and its influence on developing countries. The European Union therefore proposed a policy coherence document that states that European food security should not result in food insecurity elsewhere. Especially as agriculture plays a crucial role in the economic development of many developing countries. A growing agricultural sector also supports the development of non-food sectors, which leads to better wages. Farm policies have disturbed this process before, by protecting domestic markets with price supports and border protection, the dumping of surpluses to their markets. Luckily, the European Union has acknowledged that its external activities are also influenced by the internal ones. Which resulted in commitments for coherent policies that address climate change, meaning; preventing a loss of biodiversity,

degradation of ecosystems. Also, securing food security for all (not just the EU), which also includes commitments on biodiversity, climate change, agriculture, research and the CAP itself. Since 2000, CAP has drawn important lessons, by having dialogues at all levels. Which it will remain to do so in order to keep inner policies balanced with the foreign ones (Council of the European Union, 2009: 6).

Methodology

This chapter describes the research design and the two methods that have been used in order to answer the research question. It also further specifies why certain cases have been chosen and it explains methodological and executional challenges with their reliability and validity implications.

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I have chosen to conduct a case study, which is described by George and Bennett as a detailed examination of an aspect of a historical episode to develop or test historical explanations that may be generalizable to other events (George and Bennett, 2005: 5). By analyzing CAP and interviewing Dutch farmers I aim to portray a picture of the consequences Dutch farmers perceive from the European food regime. Why Dutch farmers have been selected is elaborated on in the case selection section. Qualitative research is at the basis of both methods that leads to an expansion or hypothesis of the current food regime. This makes it an inductive approach.

Policy analyses

In order to understand how farmers are affected by European regulations we first need to explore the European regulatory schemes described in CAP. By conducting a policy analyses we get a picture of what regulatory basis farmers have to deal with. As we have seen in the theoretical framework, some transnational institutions have had large influences on the CAP. WTO agreements pushed the CAP into a more liberalistic direction, whereas the Rio Earth Summit helped to make the policy greener. We have also seen that EU member states develop their own national policies based on CAP. Both regulatory forces may have different outlooks, to make sense for farmers these have to be balanced.

The policy coherence analysis will be based on policy documents/websites on the Common Agricultural Policy of 2013. The unit of analysis is the policy documents that cover the period 2007-2013, as this is the latest CAP regulation that is fully in effect and the policy changes every six years. The CAP represents several European Directorate Generals (or departments), such as Environment, Agriculture, European Environmental Agency and the council working party on International Environmental Issues (Nesshöver, Henle et, 2008: 140). National and regional provinces also have some minor influence in the actual policies directed to farmers.

Given the overlap between EU, national and regional levels, we can use Bernstein’s suggestion to first focus on general policy goals when it comes to policy coherence. Bernstein advises to look at both policy goals and the actual measures. Therefore, the analyses exists of two steps. Firstly, the policy goals are described, categorized by EU policies, Dutch and regional ones. As Limburg is the region that I focus on, only Limburgian regional policies will be mentioned. Possible contradicting policy goals will then be listed. The second step involves the actual measures. Regulations, laws, subsidies, permits all tend to support the policy goals. Yet, some may contradict other measures and policy aims. In order to get a grip on the wide variety of CAP, conditions have been made whether the policy is considered relevant or not. Firstly, the policies should directly target the Dutch farmer,

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by which I mean arable farmers, market gardeners or greenhouse market gardeners. These terms are further described in the operationalization. Secondly, due to the importance of food security and environmental issues mentioned in the food regime literature and the struggle between them, the focus will lay on policies connected to these areas only. Thus, two categories are used in both levels of analyses: food security and environmental measures.

Methodological challenges

Internal validity, whether we actually are researching what we want to know, is an important question in qualitative research. One of the ways to make qualitative research more valid is by using primary sources; those that are directly involved in the matter. In this way we make sure the information we use is not, or as little as possible, influenced by secondary authors. The policy

documents I used are mostly from its primary source: the EU, to make sure the validity of the sources is considerable high.

Apart from the question whether we are researching what we are looking for we also want our research to be conclusive for a larger group than the one we have actually been looking into, we refer to this as external validity. As I focused on the farmers of the province of Limburg in the Netherlands the question is whether the findings are applicable to farmers elsewhere as well. The CAP policy area is the European level but the national policy can still steer towards different outcomes and the role of the province of Limburg is fairly small in comparison which means the policy analyses can be generalized to a Dutch level. However, the provincial and state level approach are not representable for the European Union. Especially if we consider the year 2013 the external validity is considerable because the 2013 CAP policy should remain similar.

A reliability concern may have arisen when the policies were categorized into food security and environmental policies. Although I tried to describe the concepts clearly in the operationalization, I sometimes was confronted with my lack of agricultural knowledge. I also encountered difficulties in the overlap of the concepts. For instance, policies that facilitate an increase in the value of a product, which for instance happens with organic food, may be considered as an environmental policy as organic farming benefits the environment. On the other hand, when value of products increase due to policies, it may be considered as benefiting the farm too. I made a distinction between these to make these decisions more transparent.

Semi-structured interviews

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By focusing on a group that is targeted by the analyzed policies we can see what this group in practice experience from the policies. I have conducted nine qualitative semi-structured interviews with a variety of farmers, from small holders to large holders, organic from non-organic and arable farmers to market gardeners to give us another perspective on CAP (a rational why Dutch farmers were chosen is further described in the case selection section). A semi-structured interview means that there are certain themes that will be addressed, but the further structure is loose. This way, the interviewer is flexible and can spend more attention to those policy areas that farmers find most constraining or beneficial to their business. The themes that have been used in the interviews varied for the type of farmers. I have first asked some basic information to rightly categorize the farmer:

- Age

- Size of the farm: the amount of hectares they own and or lease - What they grow

- The size of their company: in comparison to the product they produce

- Whether they considered to produce organically. This topic has been addressed before further policy questions in order to avoid prompting.

Then I spoke with them about the following themes: - In what CAP programs they participate

- How environmental measures effect their business

- How competition increasing measures effect their business

- How their company is doing in comparison to other companies that produce a similar crop. - The reasons for farmers to quit

A qualitative interviewing approach is useful in order to discover and understand what policies are most important to the farmer. Although statistics tell us that the amount of farmers are decreasing desperately, an in-depth interview may explain why this is the case. Other than a quantitative interview, such an interview technique helps to explore unseen factors in and outside the policy areas that either benefit or hurt the farmer as they have the freedom to speak their mind. For instance, causality between EU policy promoting organic farming and the actual change of farmers towards organic producing might not necessarily be valid. Other issues like market demands should be taken into account as there could be another reason why farm prospects change. A qualitative research thus brings nuance.

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Because I aimed to interview farmers from different kinds of categories balanced throughout the sector, I have chosen for a snowball sampling approach. As farmers already have their networks with colleagues, I have asked the first two farmers I approached to connect me with other (specific) farmers. The benefits were that these farmers live in the same region, meaning it was possible to visit most of the respondents on their farm or home. Also, they are affected by similar provincial, national and international regulation schemes. External influences like market opportunities may differ as the products they produce vary. The purpose however is to find whether food security, environmental politics and its potential incoherence are a reason for the decreasing amount of farmers. Results from this case-study portray a good image of the situation of northern Limburg due to the variety of the asked farmers. To some extend it can be generalized to the Netherlands, as the differences in policies are minimal and the colleagues of these farmers face similar challenges. On an European level a generalization does not hold, due to the differences in policy approaches and the differences in farm holdings and markets.

All farmers were told in advance that their conversations were being recorded and that the data would be processed anonymously. I chose to do so from both ethical as validity reasons. By guaranteeing anonymity, farmers may just be more open about their business situation.

I expect that tree farmers per category should give an insight about the current state of how farmers perform considering the food security and environmental challenges. Especially because the diversity of production methods and product diversity in the glass house industry and arable farming is limited. Market gardeners on the other hand use a far wider range of product diversity.

For each category I selected a big and a small to normal sized kind of farm, according to their product group. Besides these regular farmers I have selected three special cases that complied with some policies of the CAP and therefore are relevant to the research question. These special cases also broaden the variety of farmers, meaning, that more perspectives on the policy are given, which makes the interviews more representable for Dutch farmers.

The special cases I selected are thus mostly based on policies that CAP has for certain farmers: Some policies are for instance directed to support young farmers. There is also policy made for organic growers, of which I also selected one respondent. Another special case I selected is a former

cucumber gardener, who changed to a nonfood anthurium production in 2009. As the policies cover the period of 2007-2013, this case might bring a more elaborate view from one of the farmers that have quit the food sector.

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When interpreting the interviews I will differentiate between the things they say about their own company and industry specific remarks. Like in the policy analyses approach, I will again categorize findings on environmental policies or food security policies, which tells us about the coherence in practice.

Methodological challenges

The interviews have been held at the companies themselves six out of nine times. One time, a farmer only wanted to answer via email, which makes it deviant from the in-depth semi-structured interview style. The data still is used, but is less extensive than from those who did participate in an in-depth interview. The main disadvantage is that follow up questions were out of order in this specific case, meaning the middle sized greenhouse respondent has provided less information. Two farmers have been contacted via phone due to their remote locations. Other than that all farmers welcomed me at their companies and homes. This benefits the ecological validity, because when people are asked in their natural environment, they feel more at comfort. Another advantage, is that they were able to speak in their own dialect. As a Limburgian I recognize the hitches for some, especially older people to express themselves in Dutch. The dialect is still strongly preferred within farmer communities. This also benefited the ecological validity. My Limburgian background thus also helped to rightfully interpret and translate the given answers.

The full length interviews are available on request. Note that these interviews are already translated from Limburgian to Dutch, which makes quotes

already not literal. Quotes used in this thesis are thus translated into English.A selection bias has occurred during the snowball sampling. When I asked the first, young farmer to connect me with different kinds of farmers of the categories mentioned before, he did just that. Due to his relatively young age he connected me with several farmers that generally were young as well. Four out of nine farmers fell in the category ‘less than 35 years’. Now, although this can be considered as a selection bias, as the relative farmer age lays far higher, according to the pie chart on the side. It may be beneficial for this

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research. When it comes to farmer endurance, new young farmers are necessary to secure endurance. The selection bias thus accidently selected a key group.

During the interviews I tried to avoid probing and prompting. Probing is the influence the interviewer has on the answers of the interviewee when intervening. Prompting is suggesting a possible answer towards the interviewee, which clearly can influence his answer (Bryman 2012, 223-224). Occasionally during the interviews I tried to summarize what was being said in order to check whether I understood the respondent correctly. Especially during the first interviews this was convenient, as there appeared to be quite some jargon which was not used in the policy documents. Some prompting may have happened, as my interpretation of the respondent’s story has been suggestive at some points.

One general challenge that comes with this type of research, is the epistemological perspective of interpretavism, meaning, that as a researcher, it is hard to conduct a research without having some preset values that influence the outcome of a research (Bryman 2012, 28). I tried to be as clear and open as possible during the analyses, by keeping myself to the operationalization, as that maximizes the validity of the analyses. But as a researcher and human being, I am part of the case that I am studying. Making it hard to get neutral objective results as all our presumptions differ. This results in differences in interpretation, which has a negative consequence for the validity of the research (Bryman 2012, 250). I also took into consideration the fact that the interviewees are entrepreneurs next to being farmers. When entrepreneurs are asked about certain policies, it is already likely that they would argue that the amount of regulations and measures disadvantages their business as many entrepreneurs would like to see fewer regulations.

The questions I asked when I addressed one of the themes, have not been identical per interview. Naturally, sub questions or follow up questions that came up during the conversations are also different per interview. This means that the reliability of the interviews are low. This is however typical for an in-depth interview, as these interview structures tend to differ, which makes it hard to duplicate a measurement.

Another disadvantage of interviewing only nine farmers, is that the sample size is rather low and not randomly chosen, making the external validity low (Bryman 2012, 61). This too is common when it comes to in-depth interviews as they are time consuming and provide a deeper kind of data instead. The stories about the effects on them do not portray a full range of characteristics that can be found in the entire farmer population, but because specific cases of important types of farmers have been selected, they do represented typical farmers throughout the country. Making the typical case to a

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certain extend representable. Especially generalizing for the farmer population of Northern-Limburg is likely as the cases I have interviewed share certain characteristics and policies and local challenges are quite similar.

Case selection

I was driven by two types of case study approaches when selecting Northern Limburg in the

Netherlands. To begin with the Netherlands can be considered as a crucial case, which according to Gerring is when “a case has come to define, or at least to exemplify, a concept or theoretical

outcome. Because of their importance either

theoretically, conceptionally, whatever we know about them matters more than what we know about other cases” (Gerring, 2001: 19). Firstly, I argue that the Netherlands is such a crucial case as the Netherlands is Europe’s frontrunner. It is one of the largest food producers and exporters of Europe. As shown in the pie chart beneath, 6,9 percent of all EU agriculture has been

(European Commission 2012-1)

produced in the Netherlands. When considering the size of the country it outweighs the production of any other EU country. The largest producer in this chart, France, is about 13 times the size of the Netherlands, whereas its real production is only 3 times higher.

The Netherlands also clearly represents the Wageningen School which has a strong influence on the European and global food regime. Together with the UK the Netherlands is the only one who evaluated its biodiversity policy systematically over the years (Kleijn and Sutherland, 2003: 964). Another reason for choosing the Netherlands is because the Netherlands may serve as a future case. The Netherlands is now one of the smallest countries, which is densely populated yet still manages to export lots of foodstuff. With population still growing, more countries may at some point need intensified agricultural lands, while still tackling problems as biodiversity decrease just likes the Netherlands does.

While choosing the Netherlands, a province needed to be chosen as well. Due to the small influence provinces have in the agricultural policies, the policy on that level had to be chosen as well. As I am looking at arable farmers, market gardeners and greenhouse gardeners I looked for a typical case approach, which is described by Gerring as “a typical case approach seeks to find the most usual case in a particular population. Which is to say, that case which is likely to be most representative on

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whatever causal dimensions of interest (Gerring, 2001: 18-19). The northern part of the province Limburg can be considered as a typical case for the following reasons. Some provinces are well known for one type of farming, the provinces Zuid-Holland is known for its green houses. Zeeland and the Northern provinces are known for arable farming, yet northern Limburg has a variety in green houses, arable farming and market gardeners (Bunte et al. 2013: 18). The reason why I specifically focus on the north is that the geographical conditions are more similar to the rest of the Netherlands. South Limburg is hilly, which has policy implications as it is considered to be a LFA (Less Favorable Area). This is an area in which farmers are entitled to financial compensation due to a natural handicap like hills and mountains, which makes it clearly different from the typical horizontal lands the rest of the country has (DG for Agriculture and Rural Development, 2012: 25).

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Operationalization

In order to make some concepts measurable and distinctive of other, sometimes seemingly overlapping concepts, this chapter is dedicated to clarify certain categories and terms that are common in the policy. I will often use descriptions of the CAP itself, as these definitions have to have some overlap in order to use them validly. These terms are used as indicators for the analyses. Farmer

In the CAP context, a farmer is an individual (or group of individuals e.g. partnerships, companies, and other legal structures through which a business is conducted) whose holding is situated with the territory of the European Union and who exercises an agricultural activity (European Commission, 2012: 19). As my focus lays on the Dutch vegetable and fruit farmer, a further distinction of the term ‘farmer’ has to be made. In the analyses I exclude non-food products like flowers, as they are not related to any food security issues. I also exclude cattle holders/meat/dairy producers, as the amount and diversity of policies would be too broad for a thesis. Also, I expect the surface used by fruit and vegetable producers greatly exceeds the surface used by meat producers, thus having a greater influence on the biodiversity of the landscape.

Three categories can be made when it comes to fruit and vegetable producers. This distinction is made because CAP has different implications per farmer category.

Firstly, there are arable farmers (in Dutch: akkerbouwers) who produce products like grains, potatoes, rice, corn, sugars, etc. Arable farmers are known to use large pieces of land and depend much on machinery.

Secondly, there are market gardeners (in Dutch: tuinders). These produce fruits and vegetables like cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, leek, etc. and thus exist out of a far more diversified range of products than arable farmers. The production method is more labor intensive than arable farming. Thirdly, the last category is greenhouse gardeners (in Dutch: glastuinders). They are also market gardeners but use capital intensive and labor intensive means to produce their fruits or vegetables under glass. A greenhouse needs relatively few space in order to accomplish a high production. Common products are paprika, cucumbers and tomatoes. Other than regular market gardeners and arable farmers, greenhouse gardeners grow their products in optimized conditions. Small pots, that have a controlled influx of water and fertilizer are often used to grow plants. They thus do not depend on a fertile soil like traditional farming. Greenhouses are also energy dependent, as they need heating. Sometimes lights are used to further optimize production.

26 Policy coherence

Throughout the research a distinction is made between those policies that are incoherent within the policy field of CAP itself, what I call intrinsic (in)coherence and extrinsic (in)coherence, which is the (in)coherence between the agricultural policies and another policy field that lays outside the CAP policy. Although my focus lays on intrinsic policies, there are other policy areas that are incoherent with the CAP policy. Although these results have not been the initial goal of this research, they still will be mentioned as their collision may be just as important for the continuity of Dutch farmers. Food Security

One aspect of the definition of food security is fairly simple: it is the provision of a stable influx of food for a population, which is guided by certain policies. Key actors that aim to provide such security have been nation states and transnational institutions, and more so corporations.

How to achieve such a goal is far more complicated as different dogmas are known when it comes to the attempt to tackle food insecurity. One perspective on providing food security is the neo-liberal one, which is described by McMichael as: “privatized global trade relations on grounds of the superior efficiencies of comparative advantage, with transnational food corporations managing the global movement of food to meet a market demand” (McMichael, 2009-1: 288). This idea is closely linked to a corporate food regime. Traditionally, food inventories have been used by states to create a backup in times of bad harvests. Nowadays, these are no longer seen as necessary and thus surpluses have shrunk over time. Because nowadays when a crop due to bad harvests creates shortage, food can be flown in from different places that do have a decent food supply, which is a typical example of marketization of the international food market. This international food security is protected and promoted by the WTO protocols. Food reserves are now often owned by private organizations, in which speculation is part of their business. This is not always in favor of consumers and farmers, as speculation exposes farmers (and some extend consumers) to an increasing price instability. Also debt burdens have resulted in the inability to import food (McMichael, 2009-1: 288). A main thought of this liberal perspective on food security is the concept of comparative advantages, which means that cheaper or productive lands, labor or an enduring evolution of technologies are seen as favorable as this competitiveness should be able to tackle future food security challenges. Critics have two main arguments to disapprove a global scale arranged food security. Firstly, the neoliberal approach restricts local self-reliance (McMichael, 2009-1: 294). Secondly, the World Bank wrote in 2008’s Developing Report that people instead rely on a global food network, with tons of food miles, rising toxicity and increasing meatification, meaning a larger environmental impact (McMichael, 2009: 160-161).

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Policies that can be considered pro food security in this thesis is everything that supports either the farmer’s production, profit or continuance. Due to WTO agreements certain farmer subsidies have been limited, which may have decreased their income. As the Netherlands has seen a significant drop in the amount of farmers I claim that farmer endurance is important for food security as well, which thus means that all policies supporting farmers are considered part of the food security policies. Food quality policies are ignored in the analyzes, although these policies generate trust in the farmer and his product because of quality improvements, I classify this as an indirect effect on the farmer and the issue of food security.

Environmental policy

One can discuss whether environmental measures are in fact part of the sustainability of the agricultural sector (thus food security), as it may lead to boundaries for farmers on a short term, yet provide long term benefits for the sector. I acknowledge these benefits, but all policies regarding ecological improvements are here defined as environmental policies.

As the different food regime stages have shown us, the overexploitation and extensive use of (petro)fertilizers on soil have not been rewarding. Especially with the rise of industrial agriculture after the Second World War, biodiversity has become an important issue. Environmental

sustainability in this thesis can be described as those measures and policies that are intended to protect or support biodiversity or tackle global warming.

Unfortunately, these policies are not always as effective as they theoretically sound. Some well-intended measures simply do not work, which is the reason why I included ‘well-intended’ in its definition. For instance, in 2001 Kleijn researched the effects of agri-environment schemes that were meant to counteract the negative impacts of modern agriculture on the environment. Although the associated costs represented about 1,7 billion euros (which nowadays has been more than doubled), the agri-environmental schemes did not lead to any reliable results of positive effects on biodiversity (Kleijn, et al., 2001: 723). Also, it is not entirely unlikely that some measures are integrated in order to create some sort of green protectionism like Campbell and Coombes describe (1999).

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Analyses

Policy analyses

This chapter describes and analyses the European agricultural policy on several levels. The

explanation of the policy provides us an overview of what farmers possibly face. Also, the coherency will be addressed, as this may show us general challenges for the sector in advance.

First an overview is given from the policy field from a European point of view. As the CAP is rather broad a selection is made of policy terrains that either represent food security or environmental measures that have implications for farmers. Secondly, the European policy goals are discussed. Most of these are set on an European level, but some are narrowed down to, or specified on a Dutch or Limburgian level. These lower levels will be dealt with in the third step; the description of the most relevant policy measures; which will be explained per policy terrain. The focus has been on the latest CAP policy of the year 2013. I used the database of waybackmachine.org to visit the European CAP policy website of September 2012, which is a moment in time that revealed the most current policies of the 2007-2013 period. In the beginning of 2013 the newer 2014-2020 policies were already posted on the CAP website, which would have given a wrong picture of the policy in 2013.

There are several policy areas that are included in the CAP. In the table beneath we can see the policy areas that will be used in this analyses. Policy areas that do not directly influence vegetable and fruit farmers are being ignored. Additionally, the policies areas and their measures should be related to supporting food security or environmental measures.

This means the following policy fields are ignored in the further analyses: Animal health and welfare, Food and feed safety, Forestry measures, Research, Climate change, Promotional measures,

Biotechnology, Quality policy and Bioenergy. Many of these policy fields are related to neither fruits nor vegetables farmers, which make them irrelevant. The quality policy is mainly meant to protect the end consumer and only indirectly effects the farmer. Naturally quality is a serious issue, as it can also have serious impacts on the farmer’s endurance. The EHEC outbreak of a few years ago is an excellent example of how quality or diseases can influence their business. Still, the focus lays on food security, rather than food safety.

Food Security policies Environmental measures

Direct support Agriculture and environment Market measures Organic farming

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Biotechnology policies cover the regulation, research and acceptance of genetically modified crops. This may affect farmers’ production capacity (thus food security) and also biodiversity (thus

environment) as modified crops may interfere or intertwine with local species. The area of

biotechnology is also not included in the analyses for the reason that there have been no farmers in 2013 that produces those kind of crops in the Netherlands (LNV Loket 2014).

The general aims of the CAP policy are described in article 39 of the treaty on the functioning of the European union and are as follows:

- An increase in agricultural productivity by means of technical progress and the rational development of agricultural production

- A fair standard of living for the agricultural community

- the stabilization of markets for farm products, food security and food affordability (DG for Agriculture and Rural Development, 2012: 10-11)

Besides these general commitments that have been the standard since the start of the CAP,

additional challenges have crossed the attention of the EU. The challenges that are recognized in the 2007-2013 policies are as follows:

- The challenge for rural development policy to encourage young farmers and ensure continuity from one generation to the next (European Commission 2012-3: 6)

- The challenge that modernization will assist farmers to become economically competitive while using environmentally sustainable techniques (European Commission 2012-3: 11) - Current and future challenges like global competition, economic and financial crises, climate

change and rising costs of inputs such as fuel and fertilizer (European Commission 2012-3: 3)

The main objectives that have been focused on in the 2007-2013 CAP that face these challenges are to strengthen the competitiveness of the agricultural sector, promote innovation, combat climate change and support jobs and growth in rural areas (European Commission 2012-3: 3). The policy measures that try to achieve these policy aims are explained in the next section.

Food Security policies

Direct support

Direct payments are payments that are directed to the farmer itself, initially to support the income of farmers. There are now two types of direct support, the single Area Payment Scheme, which is used for the newer member states in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Single Payment scheme which

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the Netherlands currently uses. This payment was introduced in 2003 and was meant to further decouple direct payments that farmers previously received for the number of goods they produced (European Commission, 2012: 40). The conditions of the payments by the EU have changed. Single Payment Scheme mostly focusses on arable farmers and in order to receive these payments, farmers are obliged to follow certain rules, the so called cross-compliance. There are two sorts of compliance schemes, the good agricultural and environmental condition (GAEC). This promotes for instance the protection of soil erosion and the maintenance of soil organic matter. The GAEC differ per member state as the environmental challenges may differ. Also provinces can add ordinances that farmers should take into consideration. The member states can thus further specify these rules (DG for Agriculture and Rural Development, 2012: 21). The Dutch version of cross compliance that relate to fruit and vegetable farmers can be found in the first appendix. The other requirements; the so called statutory management requirements, are established on the European level. These follow certain EU laws and concern public and plant health, wildlife and the environment. When farmers do not respect these laws, they will be shorted on their payment (DG for Agriculture and Rural Development, 2012: 40-41).

In 2011 another compulsory action was added to the policy. Those farmers that claim direct payments need to have seven percent of their agricultural land changed into an area that benefits the environment or improves biodiversity (DG for Agriculture and Rural Development, 2012: 15). Market measures

The most influential market measure the European Union uses in the CAP is the Common Market Organization. This policy especially effects fruit and vegetable farmers, greenhouse market gardeners and regular market gardeners.

Common Market Organization (CMO)

The common market organization is a set of measurers that enables the EU to manage the markets for agricultural products within its own territory. The purpose of market management is to stabilize markets in terms of quantity offered and purchased and the rate at which transactions take place, thus ensure that farmers do not suffer excessively low prices and that consumer have a secure supply of food at reasonable prices. There is now a single common market organization that tries to regulate these issues (DG for Agriculture and Rural Development, 2012: 11).

The European Union has sketched a policy framework in which the member states are free to prioritize certain issues that fit the CMO frame, because naturally, some member states face different challenges than others. This framework exists of four goals: