Scotland’s farming union called yesterday for an end to subsidies to inactive farmers as the organisation representing meat wholesalers urged far higher payments to calves to secure beef production.
The diverse opinions were voiced by NFU Scotland and the Scottish Association of Meat Wholesalers (SAMW) to Brian Pack’s interim report on the future of agricultural support.
They are just two of the more than 100 responses now received and which will be used to decide the final recommendations from Mr Pack in June.
Union leaders said while the ideal scenario was a world without subsidised agricultural production and markets providing profitable returns to farmers there was little hope of that being achieved, meaning support continuing. The NFU’s final submission is wide-ranging and contains many changes to its original thinking. It is, however, resolute in its demand that future support should only go to active farmers, removing the so-called “slipper brigade” who collect about £44million a year for doing virtually nothing.
Chief executive James Withers said that alone was not the only flaw in the regime, although he conceded addressing it and providing support to new entrants could only be done when the Common Agricultural Policy regime was reformed in 2013. New entrants should, meantime, receive higher payments from the rural development programme.
Mr Withers added: “The more committed you are to agricultural production the more the support you should get. The less you do, the less you should get.”
The NFU disagrees any change in support regime should happen overnight, advocating instead a five or seven-year transition period to avoid damaging agricultural capability.
As part of that phasing in, it wants a new base year set for existing payments, currently decided on average support received from 2000-02. It would not be drawn yesterday on what year that might be, conceding it may involve a date at some point in future.
That could prompt some to take the gamble to farm at higher activity levels to secure improved payments, merely continuing an existing flaw.
Mr McLaren said the idea would be to split the subsidy budget, apportioning part of it to all types of arable, including vegetables, fruit, and potatoes, and the remainder to livestock: deer, cattle, pigs and sheep.
The arable pot would be split equally on the number of acres used to produce crops, while the stock payment would be decided on the number of livestock units on each farm, assuming they met minimum stocking levels. Quite where livestock finishers who keep cattle inside fit in was not made clear.
It also wants a minimum payment for every acre in Scotland to avoid subsidy trading.
Mr Pack touted a top-up fund into which a portion of subsidies are put, but the union saw no benefit of it for arable farmers and had reservations over its use for livestock farmers because of the red tape it would generate.
It did, however, see a use for the fund in recognising the diverse levels of livestock output across Scotland, adding it could be used to boost what it said could be modest area-based payments with meaningful levels of support that rewarded activity.
Both Mr McLaren and Mr Withers recognised the interim report had stirred a debate, the conclusion of which will not be known on a European level for at least three years, however, they said it was important that Scotland went into the negotiations knowing what it wanted, albeit that any agreement was flexible enough to recognise any changes as the debate continued.
SAMW wants subsidies of more than £150 a calf to secure beef production, and says it has grave concerns about an area-based regime because it could decimate future livestock supplies.
SAMW did not back the notion of sharing subsidies with traditionally unsupported sectors to “quench political philanthropic ideals”.
Mr Pack said he was impressed by the standard of the responses received so far.