80% of European agricultural funding goes to just 20% of companies. But does three quarters effectively go to only a fifth of companies? EUfactcheck found out that these figures were indeed studied a few years ago. The claim turned out to be correct.
On 9 February, Vooruit (Flemish social democrats) politician Bruno Tobback shared a video on Instagram: “The EU spends 41 billion euros every year on support for agriculture. 80% of that goes to just 20% of companies.” But does three quarters of the 41 billion euros effectively go to only 20% of agricultural companies?
Farmers protests broke out in Belgium in February. Farmers gathered in the streets to protest against the nitrogen policy. They blocked morning traffic and the ports of Antwerp, Zeebrugge and Ghent, demanding fairer prices and better market conditions. In this context, on February 9, Bruno Tobback posted the Instagram video about EU support for the agricultural sector.
The claim of Bruno Tobback
Ward Van Hassel, an employee of Bruno Tobback, provided EUfactcheck with the correct figures on which Tobback based his Instagram claim. This data appears in a 2019 report by the European Commission exposing direct payments to agricultural producers. EUfactcheck also looked at the latest figures from 2021 and concluded that they still match.
‘When the EU refers to 20% of the farms receiving 80% of the support, this does not mean that 80% of the farms do not receive support,’ says Liesbeth Dries, expert in agricultural economics at Wageningen University. ‘The European agricultural sector is very diverse with very large but also many small farms.” A significant proportion of the support that goes to the agricultural sector from Europe does so in the form of direct payments’, Dries explains. ‘This support is admittedly subject to certain cross-compliance conditions in terms of good agricultural practices and maintaining soil health. This is a requirement that farmers must meet in order to claim direct support.’
The 2019 figures say that small farms cultivate less than 5 ha of land and get 5.5% of direct payments. Medium-sized farms cultivate between 5-250 ha and get 71.5% of direct payments. Large farms cultivate more than 250 ha and get exactly 23%.
‘The direct payments are paid mainly based on farm size, expressed in hectares’, says Dries. ‘This implies that larger farms, with much more land, will receive more direct payments.’
Direct payments are as concentrated as the land itself. 20% of the largest farms in the EU own 82% of agricultural land and production capacity. Since the largest farms represent only 2% of total farms, they have to distribute the money among fewer farms. As a result, they receive larger amounts.
‘With the funding application also comes administration,’ Dries points out. ‘For small companies, the size of the funding amount is sometimes disproportionate to the administrative effort they have to go through to receive it. Europe did try in recent years to make the administration for funding applications easier for small companies.’
‘In addition to cross-compliance, support for farmers in recent years has increasingly been directed toward green measures on a farm’, says Dries. ‘Think for example of the eco-regulations in the current agricultural policy or the support for agricultural nature management. So farm support is increasingly taking on a social relevance that is not just focused on food production, but also on other ecosystem services.’
EUfactcheck analysed the new 2021 report. It revealed that the figures remained unchanged, only those of the largest farms changed. The number of large farms decreased slightly, reducing direct payments to 22.1%.
Conclusion
These reports show that Bruno Tobback’s statement is true. The data he cites are in line with the European Commission’s data.
RESEARCH | ARTICLE © Dario Smekens and Laura Van Trijp (Thomas More University of Applied Sciences)
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