NFU president Tim Bennett will ask whether the government is using British farmers as sacrificial lambs during the opening speech of The Oxford Farming Conference today.
Following the agreements made over the EU budget and the recent WTO talks in Hong Kong Tim Bennett will refute the distorted picture of European agriculture painted by politicians who, he says, have their own agenda to pursue.
Bennett will say: “CAP was reformed in 2003, although to listen to the politicians, you wouldn’t think so. Further CAP reform is now being represented as a kind of ‘Magic Wand’ that might provide the resolution not only to the WTO talks and world poverty but also to any crisis of the European integration process. This simplistic representation fails to acknowledge a number of issues, particularly the fact that the 2003 agreement on CAP reform opened the way for EU countries to implement different degrees of decoupling and individual reform implementation. The fact that this country will impose more radical reforms than its European counterparts means that my members are being used as guinea pigs on which CAP reforms are tested.”
Bennett will add: “According to the recent budget deal, individual countries may opt out of funding rural development; I fear that while other EU governments continue to support their rural communities our government will not. If they do go down this route it will be a betrayal of previous financial commitments. It will represent an active policy decision that will disadvantage British farming.
“A great deal is at stake, the future of a sector, the provision of public goods, the maintenance of rural communities and the very fabric of the British countryside. Surely we do not want to be so short-sighted as a nation as to forget all that? Or is the government using the British farmer as a sacrificial lamb?”
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