CAP Madness
Telegraph | News | Blair EU deal means 40pc cut for 'green' farming
Officials at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs are so embarrassed by the emerging implications of the deal that they have cancelled meetings with farming bodies to explain the details....
It has emerged that despite it having been the Government's policy for the past nine years to switch farm subsidies from production to paying "public money for public goods", the result of Mr Blair's EU budget deal is a cut in payments for green farming, with standard single payments to farmers left as before.
Instead of cutting Pillar 1 payments - "bad" CAP payments in Defra's eyes - it cut Pillar 2 payments, the only "good" form of Common Agricultural Policy payments, in the interests of a reduction in the overall size of the EU budget.
The environmental payments are the justifiable part of Government funding for farmers and are doing real good as can be seen as you drive the countryside - they are also my main budgeted source of income for the next few years....