CAP must stay in place - Hume

Mr Hume, who took part in a Scottish Parliamentary debate on the future of the CAP yesterday (Thursday, February 25), stressed it should be retained to secure future food supply.

He said he had a number of concerns about the CAP. He thought it ‘questionable’ that a farmer on good quality land could get paid more per hectare than one on a high hill, where both had the same amount of stock or activity on them.

He was also concerned how minimum cultivation could be policed and how that might be balanced against someone who had put an expensive crop in the ground, such as potatoes. “So I do have some concerns about unintended consequences of encouraging less activity.”

He added: “We do not want to fix the problem of a very few landlords doing next to no activity for their single farm payment by positively encouraging all land users to do minimal work for theirs.

“There is an argument that re-basing the payments, by taking into account current or recent activity could be a good way forward to encourage active farming, and take away the problems with the current historic model.

“Perhaps a base area plus top-up for livestock would be workable and be good use of public money. And arable units could be freer to plant what suits the market and consumer, but there must be a certainty that actual work occurs on the arable units, otherwise we may see landlords take back their land in hand to do minimal cultivation with contractors – not good for the communities and unhelpful in encouraging new entrants.”

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