The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) has written to 200 rural MPs warning that the Government is not ready to begin the transition away from the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS).
The organisation, which represents 30,000 landowners across England and Wales, first argued for a ‘public money for public goods’ scheme over 10 years ago, but warns transitioning from the old system to the new is fraught with dangers, with many farmers fearing they could be put out of business if the transition is handled badly.
The bulk of the future investment will be through the new Environmental Land Management scheme (ELMs), but it will not be fully available to farmers for 4 years. Meanwhile, cuts to the old scheme will begin in January 2021.
By the time ELMs are fully available, many family farms face losing 50% of the financial support they have previously received. Given that even large farming enterprises operate on wafer-thin margins, it seems clear many businesses will be put at risk.
Mark Bridgeman, President of the CLA, said:
“The Government’s aims of a more sustainable farming sector are noble; we support them fully.
“At a time of dramatic change, globally and domestically, this latest threat to farming risks plunging the sector into a new and entirely unnecessary crisis. The farming industry has encouraged the Government to build a bridge between the old and the new schemes and to phase the change carefully. To their credit, Ministers listened, but information on this bridging mechanism is very scarce.
“The Government’s aims of a more sustainable farming sector are noble; we support them fully. We also understand the Government’s desire to make a clean break from European policy, but in their haste to remove the old system they risk driving out of business the very people who will deliver the environmental benefits they – and the public – wish for.”
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Read the letter sent to rural MPs here.
In the Southeast, the CLA represents thousands of farmers, landowners and rural businesses in Kent, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and the Isle of Wight.
For more information about the CLA and its work, visit www.cla.org.uk/your-area/south-east/regional-news
Go Vegan.. Farm Plants.. No blood no terror no dairy babies taken from their mothers no cruelty involved.. Vegan for Animals.. Health.. Enviroment.. World Hunger ((you eat crops instead of feeding it animals you later eat)) It would be all win win.. It all needs to stop..
For Kindness Cruelty Free and Healing….
for everyone to go vegan, you need to cut down all the trees, thus destroying the ability of the planet to remove C02 from the atmosphere, then you need to destroy what habitats of creatures are left, that didn’t use the trees as their homes, then you need to destroy all the insects and underground habitats and kill off all other flora and fauna, just so you can enough space available to have more plant food grown.
of course we then need to give up mobile phones and anything else that has a battery, as they contain animal derived gelatin and there is no human made alternative to gelatin in batteries
Don’t be cruel to plants, don’t eat them.
Why do you kept spouting this rubbish .No one is interested. If you want to be vegan. Be vegan .but sane people like proper food .
I am Vegan purely for Animals but I mentioned that its got many many other benefits….
Nice to be nice, but see it as naive. You can’t just watch whole species become extinct and watch them all die of old age as would happen to cattle, sheep, pigs etc.
Far better to give them a decent life and a painless end, rather than as we do with people or some pets, keep them lingering on until pain, disability and mental suffering of their pain and lack of living a normal life, ends their suffering as they eventually cruelly die.
Don’t agree with not eating meat, yet hate cruelty, NOT imo, the same thing at all
What about vitamin B12 supplementation?
how can you flaunt a “healthy, natural” diet when you need supplementation for a vital vitamin?
Never seen a poor farmer but it’s a very mooooving story.
Won’t be any farms left here soon as the greedy Council build over our green field sites, to aid their developer friends.
Vote them OUT next time
“More sustainable” blah blah blah “more sustainable” blah blah blah. Something something “sustainable”. etc.
Farming animals will be all but finished by 2030. Meat substitutes will be offer only. All animals will be returned to their natural habitat ( zoos etc closed) and no cats dogs etc as pets! Not conspiracy, fact!.
The rich will always eat quality meat.
Yes you are right, but not for you or me!
Awwwww, maybe the farmers might have to do some work for a change.