Europe’s food and farming system is broken!

It is devastating our climate and the environment, wiping out wildlife, harming public health, and it is failing small and medium sized farmers as well as rural communities.
 

And the main driver behind all this is the Common Agriculture Policy (CAP) – one of the EU’s oldest, most influential, most debated and most costly policies. 
 

So let’s fix it – make your voice heard in the debate on the future of agriculture!
 

The European Commission has just launched a major online Public Consultation on the future of the CAP which runs until 2 May 2017. With the EU itself in crisis, now is the moment to show change is both needed and possible!
 

It is essential that as many organisations and individuals, from as wide a variety of sectors and countries as possible, seize this golden opportunity to tell the European Commission that the EU’s food and farming system is broken and that a reformed CAP must be:
 

• Fair – for farmers and rural communities.
• Environmentally Sustainable – for clean air and water, healthy soil, and thriving plant and animal life.
• Healthy – for good food and the well-being of all people.
• Globally Responsible – for the planet’s climate and sustainable development around the world.
   

The European Commission’s online Consultation on modernising and simplifying the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is open to public responses from 2 February to 2 May 2017. You can respond to the consultation by filling out the response form on the consultation website.
 

The consultation questionnaire consists of multiple choice questions and open questions. To help you, we have prepared our own recommended responses to the consultation and have outlined our rationale for these recommendations, which you can find below (printable PDF also available here). You are free to use our recommendations in their entirety or simply to inspire your own responses. You may also find our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Resources sections helpful in formulating your responses.
 

The Living Land campaign was established to support a wide coalition of diverse organisations and individuals who agree that the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is broken and must be fixed. This campaign was started by BirdLife Europe & Central Asia, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and WWF EU, but its vision goes far beyond environmental issues.