New hill support scheme worries
New hill support scheme worries
By Philip Clarke
HILL farmers will suffer a major redistribution in support next year if plans being drawn up by MAFF for the new hill farm allowance are accepted in Brussels.
The revised proposal, being considered by minister Nick Brown, follows the outrightby the commission of an earlier scheme, to replace the Hill Livestock Compensatory Allowances.
That version suggested weighting the new payments 80% on the basis of historic receipts and 20% in return for environmental work. But the commission said this was unacceptable as it maintained the link between livestock numbers and subsidy levels.
Its preference is for something akin to the Austrian system, where individual farms are mapped and graded according to gradient and environmental conditions, with payments set to match.
As such, MAFF has drafted a new scheme with three different area payment rates, depending on whether the land in question is in a disadvantaged area (DA), a severely disadvantaged area (SDA) or on open moorland.
Even though these payments would be tapered, with more £ per ha for smaller farms in the DAs and less for larger farms on the moorlands, the NFU is concerned that a damaging loss of support lower down the hill would result.
"People are talking about this redistribution as being something of little consequence," said NFU less favoured area chairman, Peter Allen. "But this is peoples livelihoods we are dealing with. Without this support, hill farmers in places like Cumbria and Wales will be forced out of business."
Instead, the NFU is pressing MAFF and the commission to accept something closer to the original plan, relating 75% of the payment to historic receipts and 25% to the environment.
But its chances of success seem slim. A similar scheme put forward by the Irish government was also roundly rejected by Brussels.
An angry Irish Farmers Association president, Tom Parlon, accused Brussels of making too strict an interpretation, estimating that a flat rate acreage payment would adversely affect 15,000 farmers in the Republic. "This scale of loss is totally unacceptable," he said, urging farm minister Joe Walsh to raise the issue at next weeks farm council in Luxembourg.
Meanwhile, a senior UK government source this week confirmed that both the NFUs latest suggestion and the revised MAFF proposal were with Mr Brown, who was expected to make his choice quickly.
"Our aim is to pay the Hill Farm Allowance as normal next February," he said. "For that, we need this sorted out in Brussels by the autumn at the latest."
The total sum of money involved is unchanged from the old HLCA programme, worth approximately £40m to English farmers and £157m for the whole of the UK in 2001.