The scientists Brussels listens to have made the farmer's case

The scientists the European Commission actually listens to have put it in writing. ESAAF — an alliance of five of Europe's top agricultural research institutes, formed to give Brussels independent advice — published its position on the EU livestock strategy in June, "A Resilient, Circular, and Just Future for the EU Livestock Sector."

Its core argument: the next CAP should pay farmers for the public goods they deliver — carbon held in permanent pasture, biodiversity, managed landscape, living rural communities — and it warns plainly that farmers won't invest in any of it without income security. It calls for a just transition for farmers, not just for the climate, and for targeted incentives to keep young people farming so rural Europe doesn't empty out.

Read that and tell me it isn't a description of Irish suckler farming. Low-density herds on marginal ground are already delivering exactly what ESAAF says Europe should be paying for, and getting nothing from the market for it.

To be straight about it: ESAAF is no cheerleader for headage payments — it wants support tied to outcomes, not numbers. That's exactly why our CAP submission scales the money to breeding quality, front-loads the family farm and caps it at 100 cows. A proper payment on the first 25 suckler cows isn't a reward for volume — it's payment for public goods that currently go unpaid.

This isn't a lobby group talking its own book. ESAAF is Aarhus, INRAE, Wageningen, the Julius Kühn-Institut and Warsaw's University of Life Sciences — the people the Commission asks when it wants the science straight. When they say the money must reach the primary producer or none of it happens, that's not a farmer's complaint any more. It's the official advice.

The science case is made. CAP 2027 is where it lands or doesn't.