We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.Devolved nations slam Defra’s CAP vision
FARMING leaders and politicians in Scotland and Wales have called for greater freedom to negotiate policy in the EU after a report predicted Defra’s policies on CAP reform would result in a major drop in production.
Responding to the report, they said Defra’s plans to phase out Single Farm Payments and liberalise trade would devastate farming across the devolved regions of the UK.
Farmers Union of Wales (FUW) said the latest research had confirmed its ‘worst fears’ over Defra’s plans and president Gareth Vaughan urged Ministers to revise their policy.
“The proposals, if allowed to go ahead, will rip the heart and soul out of the rural communities in Wales and completely destroy what little food security we retain,” he said.
“The fall in livestock numbers would have serious consequences for the environment, while the drop in income for farms and food businesses would close down many businesses and cost thousands their jobs.”
The FUW made representations to the Welsh Assembly’s rural affairs sub committee inquiry into the future of the dairy industry, calling Defra’s plans ‘a vision of the destruction of the UK agricultural industry’.
Rural threat
Eifion Huws, chairman of the FUW’s milk and dairy products committee, said the planned reforms threatened to ‘tear the backbone out of rural Wales’.
Scotland’s rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead also hit out at the report, saying it ‘blows out of the water any pretence that the UK Government’s vision for agriculture has the interests of farmers at its heart’.
He also used the report to issue another call for greater independence from Whitehall.
“Scotland must be allowed to implement its own vision and needs its own voice in Europe to influence the CAP reforms,” he said.
His views were backed by NFU Scotland, which highlighted the recent recommendation from the Calman Commission. It called for greater freedom for devolved administration EU discussions.
NFUS president, Jim McLaren, said: “It is of key importance to Scotland that any future European discussions on the CAP, or any EU decision-making that will affect Scottish farmers, has an established route in which Scottish opinions can be taken on board at a UK level.
“To ensure the views from all parts of the UK are taken on board, ahead of discussions on the shape of the CAP post-2013, central and devolved governments must act on the Calman recommendation of creating a more coordinated approach to policy-making among UK administrations.”
The Vision for the CAP report
THE research was carried out by the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute (FAPRI) at the University of Missouri, Queens University Belfast and the AgriFood and Biosciences Institute in Northern Ireland.
Researchers looked at UK agriculture under five different scenarios, starting with the current CAP Health Check, going right through to modelling the system under the more extreme policies put forward by Defra in its ‘Vision’ document.
The report predicts what UK agriculture will look like in 2018 under each scenario, and with Defra advocating phasing out Single Farm Payments and reducing import tariffs, it gives a stark outlook on what could happen in the future.
The results
If Defra’s plans are implemented in full, the beef and sheep sectors would suffer most, with only minor effects on the dairy, pig, poultry and arable sectors:
Livestock numbers
- Ewe numbers will fall 17 per cent
- UK suckler cow numbers will fall 26 per cent. In Wales this would be greater, with a drop of 29 per cent predicted
Market prices
- Beef prices will fall 25 per cent
- Sheepmeat prices will fall 11 per cent
- Poultry prices will fall 12 per cent
- UK butter prices will drop 17 per cent
- UK cheese price will drop 7 per cent
A subsequent drop in production across all sectors - beef and sheep in particular with drops of 12 and 15 per cent respectively - would also threaten the UK’s food security and lead to a rise in imports.
Overall, the EU would require an extra 285,000 tonnes of imported beef - a rise of 43 per cent - while the UK would see its beef imports rise 30 per cent as production decreases.