2nd Thematic Group meeting on the CAP's Role in Supporting Sustainable and Competitive Livestock Systems

• Develop unified standards and certification, or, as a minimum, clear guidelines or a standard framework for measurement, as the range of approaches currently used to underpin labels makes it confusing for consumers and stakeholders to know what they are buying.
• More uniform and transparent data systems and governance to ensure greater clarity on who owns the data and who has access to it.
• Value chain organisation, with greater cooperation and joint ventures, with an emphasis on sharing risk through the value chain.
• Funding - in the form of a Transition Fund - to enable farmers to move out of ‘lock-in’ situations, to drive system change and address the immediate pressures faced.
• Future-proofing the sector, bringing fresh ideas and new knowledge to rural areas through a ‘Rural Erasmus’ scheme for young people.

The role of the CAP:

• Direct payments (DPs): some TG members suggest redirecting these towards more public goods-focused payments, whereas others argue for their retention to provide a basic level of income support. Most agreed that greater tailoring of DPs was necessary to support the maintenance or transition to sustainable systems.
• Messaging and language about the CAP should be more consistent and coherent with other EU environmental and climate objectives and commitments, to emphasise the importance of resilience, sustainability, and the need for transition as an insurance policy for the future. With this in mind, CAP measures should have eligibility criteria attached to avoid detrimental intensification and should move towards a greater focus on results/outcomes.
• Provide support to ‘spread’ or ‘balance’ livestock more evenly between rural areas to avoid hotspots of intensive production - this would require systemic changes, including a shift to more mixed farms and mixed markets.
• Addressing rural infrastructure and generational renewal to encourage younger generations to live and work in rural areas.

Coherent policy frameworks:

• Better alignment between CAP objectives and other EU policies/initiatives is required, e.g. the Nature Restoration Law and grassland management for biodiversity; circularity and animal by-product legislation; water policy to minimise competition between human and agricultural consumption; climate adaptation and management of land to reduce flood risk and wildfires; energy policy, particularly solar and its effects on land prices and land use; rural development policy to make rural areas attractive places to work and live; trade agreements and implications for market dynamics and competition, affecting efforts for greater sustainability.
• Harmonisation of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for sustainability and data for various purposes, including tracking funding allocation against sustainability objectives and determining appropriate stocking densities at the regional level to ensure livestock systems are adapted to local carrying capacities.

Enhanced communication efforts, e.g. between different parts of the European Commission, with stakeholders as well as with consumers, to improve understanding and dialogue about the sustainability of livestock systems and explore how the CAP and other policies can be better aligned to provide a coherent policy framework to support action in this area.

• Balancing livestock distribution in the EU, based on the carrying capacity of the land, providing differentiated support for young farmers in depopulated areas and creating region-specific business models to incentivise more animals in low-density areas and stimulate extensive methods in hotspot areas.
• Payments for the delivery of public good/ecosystem services from livestock grazing and sustainable practices from private sources (e.g. by developing certification schemes and environmental credits, or a tax on different sectors such as tourism/water) that can be used alongside public schemes, with clear KPIs and robust models developed for assessing impact.
• Ways to encourage more circularity through promoting bioenergy and bio-fertilisers, encouraging greater collaboration between livestock and arable farmers to encourage greater self-sufficiency and reduce dependency on imports.
• Support for the establishment of the processing industry in low-density livestock areas and for extensive livestock systems in high-density livestock areas, including adapted food safety rules for different sizes of slaughterhouses, to reduce the distance/time of travel for animals.
• Development of a common EU definition of different farming systems in the EU – intensive, extensive, free-range, etc.
• Schemes to encourage young farmers to take up farming in depopulated areas.

Creation of quality assurance schemes for sustainable livestock farmers, and provision of information resources for consumers to raise awareness about what the labels mean.