Fearful farmers ‘in dark’ over post-brexit support

PLANS for post-brexit agricultural support are based on “blind optimism”, leaving anxious farmers in the dark, according to a report from Parliament’s spending watchdog.

The public accounts committee sounds the alarm bell today about the system to replace the EU’S Common Agricultural Policy.

Sir Geoffrey Clifton-brown, deputy chairman of the committee, warned: “The recent energy price crisis should be a salutary warning of the potential risks to the availability and affordability of food if the UK becomes even more reliant on food imports.”

The National Farmers’ Union fears that the country could “end up increasing imports of food produced to lower environmental standards”.

The Westminster watchdog says the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs has given no detail about how it expects increases in productivity or environmental benefits to become a reality. It claims farmers have not had the information they need to make plans, and have been hit with “anxiety... exacerbated by a historic lack of trust caused by the department’s past failures in managing farm payments”.

For more than 40 years farms received subsidies through CAP, with England’s farmers getting around £2.4billion a year.

Defra’s post-brexit “future farming and countryside programme” will focus on a range of goals, including improving the environment, protecting the countryside and boosting productivity and animal welfare.

The Environmental Land Management scheme, to be fully launched in 2024, will pay farmers for improving the environment.

But MPS claim Defra has not shown how the matching £2.4billion a year it plans to spend on agricultural schemes will provide value for money. Tom Bradshaw, NFU vice president, said the “lack of information, at the exact time direct payments from current support schemes are being phased out, leaves farmers in an untenable position”.

However, Environment Secretary George Eustice said: “Farm incomes have improved significantly since the UK voted to leave the EU in 2016.There will never be a better time to improve the way we reward farmers.”