Farmers will ask for UK handouts
THE National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has called an extraordinary meeting of its council to start drawing up its demands for subsidies from the post-Brexit Government.
Britain’s farmers received £2.4billion last year in payments from the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy, and NFU President Meurig Raymond has already warned that many farms would fail without these handouts.
A deal to replace subsidies with direct payments from the UK taxpayer is likely to top the agenda.
Raymond said: ‘We have a special extraordinary meeting next Friday to talk through timetables and start talking through priorities. Then it’s a case of sitting down and explaining to Government how important it is we have a policy in place sooner rather than later.
‘There’s a lot of uncertainty and we are entering uncharted waters. I just hope that the support we’re getting at the moment from Europe, and the Single Market opportunities exporting into the Continent, won’t change. We’re trying to get clarification on that.’
Raymond added: ‘The big issue will be exporting back into Europe. If there are import tariffs on our exports into Europe, it will make life fairly difficult. Our sheep sector exports 38 per cent of its sheep to Europe. We export a lot of cereals, dairy products, beef.’
The NFU supported the Remain campaign but it is thought a large number of UK farmers still voted to leave.
Analysis by the Country Land & Business Association (CLA), which represents country landowners, farmers and rural businesses in England and Wales, found rural areas voted to leave the EU in greater numbers than the national average. A total of 55.3 per cent of voters from local authorities classified as ‘rural’ by the Office of National Statistics supported the leave vote.
Meanwhile, Barrie Deas, Chief Executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, said it will be ‘complex defining an alternative to the Common Fisheries Policy’, which governs where fleets can fish in the EU and sets fishing quotas.
He said: ‘We will be looking for bilateral or trilateral arrangements with the EU.’