Nex week (March 13) the European Parliament will vote on reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and there’s still time for you to take action and ask for greener farming.
Our Facebook tool – Good Crop / Bad Crop – explains the problem of fields and fields of the same crops being grown across Europe (known as monoculture) and the advantages of crop rotation – when farmers grow a range of different crops and change what they grow in each field every year.
It enables you to contact your Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) through Facebook, Twitter or by email and ask them to make sure the CAP encourages farmers to use crop rotation.
The simple choice for farmers between planting different crops on their farm or growing the same crops year after year can have a major effect on the environment and wildlife.
Crop rotation has many benefits – healthier soil, more wildlife, less pesticide use and pollution, fewer climate-changing emissions.
Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy gives farmers public money (subsidies) to help cover their costs. If this money was used to encourage farmers to rotate what they grow it would protect soil, wildlife and our environment for future generations.
We still have time to show MEPs we want a green and healthy environment! We can influence their decisions about farming and our countryside. By using the CAP to encourage different crops instead of monocultures, we can have agriculture in the future which is kind to nature, uses fewer pesticides, does not make climate change worse, and additionally stops small farms going out of business.
Visit Facebook to find out more about crop rotation and contact your MEPs NOW.
After months of campaigning for a greener and fairer farming policy in Europe; citizens, activists, farmers and consumers will gather in Strasbourg on 12 March – the day before the vote – to call for the start of a new agricultural policy. From 09.30 to 15:30 a series of colourful actions with costumes, banners and some animal guests will take place in front of the EU Parliament.
Activities include open-air cooking of a ‘Good CAP soup’ to be shared with MEPs and a human chain around the Parliament.
