News from Brussels that the EU Commission is planning to bring forward the delivery date for single farm payments should have received a rousing welcome.
In response to the ongoing dairy crisis - and no doubt influenced by the rowdy rabble clashing with police outside her office window - Mariann Fischer Boel has decided that up to 70% of the 2009 SFP should be paid out in October.
Even better, this money should be available to all SFP claimants in Europe, not just dairy farmers who are suffering the most.
It would have been better still if that money had been available now, to ease the current cash flow difficulties. But that would not be possible due to the fact that the EU's financial year does not actually start until October.
The move is welcome nonetheless, giving those dairy farmers who stay in business until next October something to look forward to.
But the commissioner's announcement has received only a muted welcome this side of the Channel - and that's because the chances of any English farmers benefitting from the move is about as likely as Gordon Brown winning the next election....
The RPA's track record suggests it is almost inconceivable that it could ever manage an early payment. Indeed, it has just been fined a massive £200m for late delivery in 2005/06 - the result of the excessively complex dynamic hybrid system of SFP payments, combined with a wonky computer system.
To be fair, the RPA has improved its performance since then. Indeed it managed to get 59% of 2008 SFPs out by the end of December, 80% by the end of January and currently 96% has been paid out.
There is also some hope that, given their simpler regimes, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish producers may have more success in getting an early SFP payment this year. If anyone needs it at all, it has to be the Northern Irish who have seen milk prices languishing well below the cost of production for far too many months.
But really the onus is on all the regional governments to get their act together and ensure that the 70% advance goes out at the earliest opportunity ie in mid-October. Otherwise British farmers will once again find themselves at a competitive disadvantage to their European competitors.
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