In a joint statement issued by the main fruit, vegetable and salad growers and exporters organisations – Ccae, Fepex, Asaja, Coag and Upa – growers complain that proposed de-coupling of subsidies will lead to unfair competition in their sector.

By granting support by farm or business rather than by volume of production, growers fear that producers in other sectors of agriculture will use the funding to enter into horticultural production which will not benefit from the same subsidy systems.

This would not only unfairly subsidise production by new producers, particularly in annual field crops, but also risks oversupplying and destabilising the market for existing growers, particularly of vegetable, salad and soft fruit crops.

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