Where does the EU budget deal leave Scotland’s wildlife and farmers?
Heads of State, including Prime Minister David Cameron, reached agreement on the EU Budget last Friday. This agreement sets out overall spending on the Common Agricultural Policy and will, in due course, determine just how much public money will be spent supporting Scotland’s farmers in future years. Scotland gets a poor deal from the CAP - especially for its Rural Development Programme which is severely underfunded. The reasons for this are in part historical -Scotland didn’t adopt things like agri-environment programmes until quite late in the day, so didn’t build up a ‘budget’ to work with. But all this is water under the bridge and hopes of a better deal for wildlife friendly farmers had been raised by EU Commissioner Ciolos. Unfortunately nothing about the deal struck by the Heads of State bodes well for increasing the funding available for those farmers who produce food in harmony with the environment – our High Nature Value farmers - of which we have a good many in Scotland.
Such farmers are dependent on support that compensates for the physical constraints of the land being farmed and on schemes that pay for environmental land management. Regrettably, it’s exactly this kind of support that will get the smallest share of the CAP – just 23% of the total. Meanwhile, direct payments will continue to receive the lion’s share of the CAP budget and proposals to ‘green’ these payments have been greatly watered down. We now need Cabinet Secretary, Richard Lochhead to enter quickly into discussions with UK and other devolved country Ministers to determine how the overall (and inadequate) UK pot of money will be divided. And we need all Ministers to agree to use the option to move money from poorly targeted direct payments into Rural Development Programmes to support wildlife friendly farming and sensible business diversification.
To explain this another way - I want farmers and crofters in Scotland to receive positive help to care for our wildlife, not find that they are better off by ignoring it, or worse still being paid to do things that wreck it. If we want to protect what makes our countryside special-the flowers, the birds and the patchwork of moor, mountain and wetland then we must invest in its future. That is why the reform of the CAP is so important to everyone, and not just farmers. To read more visit: http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/339926-uk-leaders-urged-to-save-wildlife-after-terrible-european-budget-deal.