UKIP agricultural policy ‘unrealistic’ says CLA

UKIP’s plans for taking UK farming out of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the European Union are “unrealistic and uncosted” – according to CLA deputy president Ross Murray.

Mr Murray clashed with UKIP leader Nigel Farage during a packed debate on the first day of the CLA Game Fair at Blenheim Palace.

The debate titled The countryside would be better off if we left the EU saw the two lock horns over the issue of restricting payments to farms over a certain size.

See more: Photos: Game Fair 2014 attracts the crowds

UKIP policy is that farmers would still be paid a form of single farm payment if the UK exited the EU, but payments would be capped above a certain level. 

“There is no logic to capping,” said Mr Murray. “We have the most efficient farming industry in Europe and part of that comes with scale.”

It would, he said, be madness to bolt from Europe and Britain needed to stick with the European Union – but should seek to reform its ways of operating.

Mr Murray told the audience of more than 300 people the argument that British farmers could survive without support from Europe was a fallacy. “If we opt out of the EU our exports will be cut to shreds and we will be completely at the mercy of the supermarkets who will always buy on price. Quite simply, we will not be able to compete against other farmers in Europe who will still be receiving public funds.”

The value of being in Europe, he said, amounted to 25 billion Euros over the next seven years which came, not just in the form of direct payments to farming, but also as investment in the wider rural economy.

But Mr Farage rejected the claim that exiting the EU would hit trade, pointing that the UK itself was the biggest Euro zone export market.

“The effects of leaving the EU in the short term would be negligible, but in the long term there is a big benefit to us being outside the EU. We can get the Great British public onside and interested in farming and understand what we are doing – currently the debate on agriculture has reached an all-time low.”

On the issue of wind farms, he said he did not want to see the countryside further blighted by them.

Many landowners may have made money from them, he said. “All I can say, for you, is UKIP not the party for you.”