Who Gets Paid to Farm in Europe? Rethinking the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy

Can you tell us what the Good Food Good Farming (GFGF) is and what you’ve been working on in the past year?

Sure! So Good Food Good Farming is an alliance that brings together groups and organisations who are active at local, national and EU level to put pressure on decision makers for a transition of EU food and farming policies.

Our work in the past year has been centered on two different projects.

First, we created a recipe book that gathers the demands of grassroots communities across Europe who participated in our European Days of Action last October. They share their ‘recipes for change,’ which serves as an activist campaigning tool.

Second, we’ve developed a joint position paper for the post-2027 Common Agricultural Policy[1] (CAP) reform. To do this effectively, we leveraged the collective expertise of our 16 national coalitions, representing 14 countries. This collaboration was key in both drafting the paper and planning coordinated follow-up campaigns to ensure our message resonated. Following its official launch on June 11, we headed to Brussels to personally present our brief and demands to members of the European Commission and Parliament.

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[1] The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the European Union’s main policy on farming and food. It provides financial support to farmers and funds rural development across Europe.

The CAP is a very polarizing topic. How did you manage to get all these actors on board?

That’s a great question! Well, we focused on broad consensus building, dedicating a full year to developing our position. We started with very broad demands gathered in a workshop and then gradually narrowed them down. Throughout this process, if a proposed point became too narrow for any of our members, we treated it as a “red line.” This meant we would revert to a broader formulation, which generally helped in maintaining agreement.

Frequent meetings and open discussions were also key. We recognize the inherent complexity of the CAP, and our response had to be equally comprehensive. We adopted a holistic approach that integrates environmental and climate measures with market and trade considerations. This ensures a balance between socioeconomic justice and environmental/climate justice. Essentially, we’re striving for a just and resilient agricultural transformation.

The position paper takes a clear stance against the industrial model of agriculture. How does it propose to support small-scale, agroecological farmers in becoming the foundation of Europe’s future food system?

The core issue is that current CAP funding, with its hectare-based payments, mostly benefits big industrial farms. Our big demand is to reform this funding structure by phasing out those ‘unqualified payments.’ These are payments based purely on land area, not on how you farm or what public good you deliver.

By shifting away from that, we can free up a lot of CAP budget that currently goes to industrial agriculture. We want to redirect that money to primarily fund public goods and specifically support new, diverse, small, and medium-scale farms – because they actually make up most of Europe’s farms but get the least funding.

It’s not just about redirecting money, though. We also need to strengthen and better coordinate environmental measures. We believe we can increase environmental ambition and make it more accessible, rather than just ‘simplifying’ it away. Essentially, we want the CAP to stop prioritizing industrial farming and instead prioritize small, mixed farms, new entrants, and the transition to agroecological and organic farming. It’s about fairness, resilience, and recognizing the true value these farms bring!

Bringing together national coalitions from very different agrifood contexts must have been complex.  How did the diversity of perspectives—from Ireland to Poland—enrich or challenge the development of a shared vision in the paper?

Bringing together national coalitions from such diverse farming backgrounds really enriched our work, especially through all the great discussions on best practices. Our position paper even highlights some fantastic examples from different countries that the EU could learn from and encourage more widely.

We totally get that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach just doesn’t work for the EU’s diverse Member States. But, finding a successful best practice and seeing how it could be adapted elsewhere? That’s incredibly valuable. For instance, we highlighted Ireland’s performance-based approach. While such approaches are often criticized, in the Irish context, it has worked exceptionally well and offers some real insights. We definitely think it’s worth a closer look where relevant.

At the same time, we advocate for a hybrid approach across the EU, mixing both performance and results-based methods. This way, our demands aren’t identical for everyone, but rather offer broader guidance for EU institutions, always keeping those important national nuances in mind.

The position paper is highly political, but food is also deeply cultural. How can this policy work stay grounded in the lived experiences of eaters, cooks, and local food communities? And how can civil society actors, notably in the Slow Food network, help move the proposals forward?

The CAP is a policy monster. It’s incredibly complex, and yet, its outcomes are felt in very real, everyday ways. Across the EU, the way CAP funds are distributed creates or reinforces deep structural inequalities—whether that’s in terms of gender, generational access, or how environmental protection is (or isn’t) supported. For instance, less than 2% of young farmers benefit from CAP funding. That’s not just a statistic—it’s a symptom of a broken system.

To reimagine the CAP, we have to start with the evidence of what hasn’t worked so far. We can’t afford to speculate. This is one-third of the EU budget we’re talking about—it’s public money, and it should be delivering public goods. That includes healthy soil, thriving rural economies, and accessible, nourishing food.

Staying grounded means rooting this conversation in people’s real experiences. Whether you’re a farmer, a cook, or just someone buying food, CAP affects you. It shapes what you eat, the way food is produced, and even the future condition of the land we all depend on.

This is where civil society plays a crucial role. Networks like Slow Food have the unique ability to activate communities on the ground—raising awareness, sharing knowledge, and translating policy into tangible stories and action. These grassroots voices are essential. They bring human experience to the policy table and make technical conversations accessible, emotional, and real.