European Union negotiators struck a deal on reforms to the bloc's huge farming subsidy programme on Friday, introducing new measures aimed at protecting small farms and curbing agriculture's environmental impact.

The deal ends a near three-year struggle over the future of the EU Common Agricultural Policy, which will suck up around a third of the EU's 2021-2027 budget, spending 387 billion euros on payments to farmers and support for rural development.

Representatives from EU member states and European Parliament clinched the agreement, which aims to shift money from intensive farming practices to protecting nature, and rein in the 10% of EU greenhouse gases emitted by agriculture.

The European Union's huge subsidy programme for agriculture is failing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions from farming, despite 100 billion euros of such subsidies being labelled as climate spending since 2014, auditors said on Monday.

The reservoir created by Hoover Dam has sunk to its lowest level ever, underscoring the gravity of the extreme drought across the U.S. West. Droughts are a recurring natural hazard but made worse recently by an accumulation of extremely dry years for most of this century. Scientists say human-influenced climate change has exacerbated the situation.

The impacts of climate change and extreme weather events are devastating food production around the world. And the issue is circular - the world’s food system is a key driver of our climate crisis, particularly with the expansion of large-scale industrial agriculture. About 80% of the extreme poor live in rural areas, with the majority of them working in agriculture. While these farmers working on less than two hectares of land often battle to grow enough to support themselves, they paradoxically produce about 30% of the world’s food.

How crucial do you think small-scale farmers' role in transforming food system?

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The new State of Finance for Nature report finds that if the world is to meet the climate change, biodiversity, and land degradation targets, it needs to close a USD 4.1 trillion financing gap in nature by 2050. The current investments in Nature-based solutions amount to USD 133 billion – most of which comes from public sources.