ABSTRACT
The departure of the United Kingdom (hereinafter “UK”) from the European Union (hereinafter “EU”) also entails the end of the applicability of the Common Agricultural Policy (hereinafter “CAP”) – encompassing objectives, financial support schemes, and standards. As agriculture is a devolved competence, this creates an opportunity in principle for each of the four nations to “take back control” and design bespoke agricultural policies. However, such opportunity might be more limited in practice, for example due to geographical, economic, and environmental constraints, interplay with reserved matters, access to markets (and the existence of trade agreements) and many other reasons. This chapter examines Northern Ireland’s (hereinafter “NI’s”) capacity to develop its own sustainable agricultural policy, by investigating both the practical and legal parameters impacting on NI agriculture and agricultural policy development. It then considers whether the Agriculture Act 2020 or the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (hereinafter “DAERA”) draft Agricultural Strategy would be suitable for NI. Whilst there are flaws and limitations in both documents, valuable insights can be garnered from them and they could act as an initial springboard for developing a tailored NI sustainable agricultural policy.
