Pushing alternative to pesticide tax
Pushing alternative to pesticide tax
By Alistair Driver and
Shelley Wright
ARABLE farmers will be faced with an annual bill of £11m and more paperwork if the government agrees to the latest industry proposals for a voluntary alternative to a pesticide tax.
But the farming unions reckon this will be a small price to pay compared with the £125m-a-year a new tax would cost if it was introduced in the spring budget.
Proposals for reducing the environmental impact of pesticides were handed to the Treasury on Friday (Jan 26) by a group including the main farming unions and the Crop Protection Association (CPA), representing pesticide manufacturers.
It is the third attempt to have the proposals accepted and Jim Walker, Scottish NFU president, said the timescale for getting government to ditch a pesticide tax was now extremely tight.
If the industry plans were not accepted then a tax could be announced in the Budget on March 6, he said.
The set of 24 proposals is built on three "pillars", including the extension of crop protection management plans to cover 30% of arable land by 2005.
This would mean more form-filling for farmers as they outline how they would control pesticide use as well as an estimated £11m-a-year cost mainly from new equipment and staff training.
NFU crop science adviser Chris Wise said the level of paperwork would be proportional to the size of the business.
The other "pillars" are the appointment of a full-time bio-diversity manager by the crop protection industry and a survey every four years of the measures in place.
Dr Wise said he expects a four-year trial period for the voluntary proposals to be announced, after which the government will decide whether farmers have complied with them.
The industry group discussed the proposals with environmental groups after the Treasury asked for wider consultation.
Expecting conflict
CPA spokesman Martin Savage said much will now depend on politics.
"The Treasury will back the proposals if they think they can advocate them to environmentalists as being a winner for everyone."
He was expecting conflict between MAFF and the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions over the tax to be exposed in an agriculture debate in the House of Commons yesterday (Thurs). *