The Government has been urged to ‘pause the funding switchover' until farmers have more clarity on the future funding of UK agriculture.
That was the message from Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) committee chair Sir Robert Goodwill, as he renewed calls of a rethink until the 'unsatisfactory' situation is resolved.
Funding
He said EFRA will be pressing Defra to come forward with more certainty as a matter of urgency, adding they were ‘not afraid of bluntly telling the Government some home truths' when things are not being dealt with or heading in the wrong direction.
"I still think there is a case to have a little pause, or to leave a small residual payment to enable some of the more marginal and smaller farms to have that little bit of assurance behind them. I have made this point to ministers and would ask them to have a look at it again," he said.
Treasury
The EFRA committee is leading on several inquiries right now across the industry, such as the challenges of tenant farmers, rural mental health, species management and the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, but Mr Goodwill said the biggest problem is uncertainty.
Mr Goodwill said he believed the scaling up of the ELM scheme was happening at a slower pace to the scaling down of BPS, and that this was why farmers were currently feeling worse off.
Mr Goodwill, an arable farmer and Conservative MP for Scarborough and Whitby, said he was particularly concerned for the future of upland farmers and that Government must ‘get the money out of the door' or he feared some funding might never be utilised.
He raised concerns that the treasury would be very happy to take back any unspent money and possibly permanently reduce the budget.
And it was important to get the balance right between food security and the environment.
Environment and food security
"I think where you have got big farms that are being purchased by supposedly philanthropic people that are essentially going to shut the gate and rewild it - I think that is not what we should be doing," he said.
"We were in danger before the invasion of Ukraine of taking our eye off the ball. We need to now be focused on producing food and incentivising farmers to grow food and deliver environmental goods."
