Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

A health check for the CAP

• Mark Mardell
• 19 Nov 07, 07:23 PM

is about to publish its "health check" on the which some argue is crying out for euthanasia rather than doctoring. But the headline is bound to be their proposal to limit such as the Queen and Prince Charles.

In 2005, the Queen received just over Β£465,000. That would be cut by around Β£140,000. The Prince of Wales received more than Β£100,000 and that would be cut by just over Β£3,000.

This may be the commission playing hard politics. Many British people dislike the CAP, dislike the idea of their money going to rich farmers and expect their government to do something about it.

Gordon Brown is particularly keen on CAP reform. This is the commission's way of asking, if the government is so hot on the idea, why they blocked this reform last time around. Do the government and the British people have more enthusiasm for agri-business and aristocrats than reform, they would ask? But if it's smart politics, is it also good sense?

I've been to to find out. In a cattle shed on this 3,000-acre farm, clouds of straw, glinting golden in the winter sun, hang for a moment before descending in a shower on surprised looking cows.

It's coming from a brand new bit of kit worth around Β£70,000, held in the jaws of a tractor. It's driven and operated by one person. Andy, the stockman, can do this job in minutes, whereas in the past it would have taken three men an hour's worth of back-breaking labour.

This is one of the farms that would suffer under the commission's proposals. It may not exactly get showered with gold from above - and the company is reluctant to talk figures - but typically a farm of this size would get around quarter of a million pounds of European Union money, and would lose about Β£64,000 under the commission's proposals.

The farm is held in trust for the descendants of a Victorian shipping magnate from Liverpool who wanted a place near London when he became an MP. But is it the descendants of a 19th Century millionaire who benefit from the EU money, or the rest of us?

The driving force behind the farm and its commitment to the environment is Richard Sterling, a genial man who's clearly committed to doing more with the land than simply making a big profit.

This is most definitely mixed farming, the sort the ecologists like: from barley to poppies for morphine, from Aberdeen Angus to free-range giant black pigs. Richard shows me one of those hedgerows that we hear a lot about. It too is mixed, sloe berries and rosehips amid the thorns, and all a statutory two metres from the edge of the crop field.

Again, environmentalists see this as really important because the hedgerows provide homes and food for small mammals and birds. One of the purposes of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy was to refocus it from simply encouraging food production to looking after and maintaining a rural environment.

Richard Sterling's fear is that if the subsidies are cut, some farmers would turn away from such environmental protection. He says that farming has been through such a tough time recently, with bad harvests, disease and pressure from supermarkets that the last thing they need is another change, and one that means less money.

He says that farmers will always look after their core business, which is after all making money by producing food; but if the European Union wants people to do "the nice things on the edges" then it shouldn't put the squeeze on the system. He argues that if the subsidies are drastically cut, some farmers will not bother with getting them at all and simply turn all their land over to more profitable cereal production.

wouldn't agree. He was an advisor to Nick Brown, when he was agriculture minister and now runs . We're peering over the big white gate into the Queen's estate at

Jack's not in favour of any subsidies unless they directly help the environment or the poor, and he would means-test EU money. He says, "It's a bit odd the monarch gets income support from Brussels. This proposal from the commission is less ambitious than the one rejected last time by the UK and Germany. It doesn't tackle the core injustice of the CAP, in that it favours industrial over pastoral, big over small, and four countries (France, Spain, Italy and Germany) over others, like Romania and Poland with big and poor rural populations."

What do you think?

• Permalink
• Comments