Retirement cash could help farmers let new generation take over

OLDER farmers could be encouraged to “retire with dignity” with a lump sum and allow innovation in agriculture as the UK moves away from direct subsidies in the wake of Brexit.

The Government will phase out £3 billion in subsidies from the EU’S Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to be replaced by a “public money for public goods” scheme under which farmers will instead be paid for things such as planting trees and maintaining peatland.

The CAP has been criticised for making it difficult for new people to get into the industry by rewarding farmers for holding on to land regardless of how productive it is and discouraging innovation.

Speaking at the National Farmers’ Union conference yesterday, George Eustice, the Environment Secretary, said the Government was considering “an exit scheme to help older farmers retire with dignity” by giving them several years’ subsidy payments in one lump sum, in order to “create an opportunity for a new entrant”.

“Sometimes a fresh perspective can make a world of difference; the farmer’s son or daughter who leaves the business to work in a different industry for a while and then returns armed with fresh thinking and new knowledge to take things to a new level; or those who never had any connection with farming, made a career elsewhere but always yearned to set up their own farming and food business,” he said. “New entrants are the life blood of any industry and farming is no exception.”

But the industry is facing a shortage of new skills, with thousands of new farmers needed in the next five years to maintain current levels, amid doubt over whether it can survive at the same scale without significant subsidies.

The Government has committed to ring fencing the £3billion of the CAP only until the end of this parliament.

Simon Gadd, the NFU’S next generation forum chairman, said agriculture was changing and needed to attract more people who had no background in farming and came from business, science and the arts.

“We’re moving into a digital age and it’s requiring a completely different mindset,” he said. “Your money isn’t made by sitting on a tractor any more – it’s made in an office.”

The Government this week released more detail about its post-cap strategy, but farmers are concerned about a funding gap that will be created as subsidies are cut before the new system will be in place.

But Mr Eustice rejected calls from the NFU and other unions to delay the subsidy cuts by at least a year, saying they were necessary to pay for pilot schemes to start moving the country to away from the CAP system.

“If we delayed by a year, we would delay everything by a year. So we have to begin this now,” he said.