Originally Posted by
cyril evans awaydays
Sort of.
It is more a greater weighting towards payments for public goods rather than for being an active farmer. Under the Common Agricultural Policy there were two streams of support, one area based and the other for environmental measures. England has always tried to maximise its use of the environmental measures fund and the opportunity of transferring money from one pot to another.
You are right that the flexibility as a consequence of leaving is that the balance can be increased. The old subsidies will be tapered down and eliminated by 2024 and replaced by the new schemes if the pilots are a success. A few points to note though:
1) The latest iteration of the EU CAP is doing this anyway. Far less emphasis on common schemes and more on each member state producing its own Strategic Plan so most of what is being proposed could be achieved within the EU;
2) Under the CAP, the UK had about £3.5 billion a year for agricultural subsidies. Having left England has committed to maintain that level of annual payment for a period. At some point though this funding stream will have to compete against all the other priorities that different governments might have;
3) There is a real risk that under these proposals that tenant farmers will be the big losers. On the area based scheme the subsidies went to the "active farmer" but for environmental measures England targeted the landlords/land owners because they could have fewer bigger agreements and get economies of scale. This is likely to accelerate and tenants could lose their existing funding and be at the whim of their landlords to see a commensurate reduction in their rents to compensate on land that is less productive. The rich get richer and all that;
4) You mention diminished food security which will also be under threat from the type of trade deals we have seen negotiated post-Brexit with Australia and New Zealand and UK produce competing with that subsidised on the continent with whatever additional bureaucracy Brexit brings in exporting UK agriculture. These schemes cannot be seen in isolation, which is why bodies such as the National Farmers Union are getting increasingly angsty (I say increasingly as angsty has been their default position in my experience)!
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