Don’t believe the doom-mongers. Our farmers and our environment can thrive after Brexit.
Have a beer with a farmer. Like everyone else, farmers have got concerns about a no-deal Brexit. But after a pint or two you’ll learn just how much the EU has screwed agricultural economics. A clean break can’t come soon enough. The system is now so complex that the multiple agencies charged with sending these payments to farmers can’t keep up. Farmers are often left with only a small proportion of what they are due.
The reforms starting coming though from our own Government in the UK are a real step in the right direction. Although farmers hate the junkie-like relationship with subsidies, it does make sense to keep-but-refocus an element of subsidy. And in all honesty, we’ll have to. Minsters have already committed to maintaining the same level of subsidy until 2022.
But it’s what we subsidise that matters most. In the UK we prize our biodiversity. The hedges, copses and spinneys that make England look, well, like England. The moors of Scotland and the rugged valleys of Wales and so on. But these aren’t productive bits of land. In France they rip them out and cultivate them. Not the valleys, they ski down those. In fact, if you’re driving down to those productive, snowy, valleys in France, you’ll note a distinct lack of hedges along the way. That’s what our growers are competing with – thousand-acre mega-fields run by huge subsidy-hovering agribusiness. They’re super-efficient, but at a shameful cost to the local ecosystem. No one wants that for here, we value nature too highly. So we need to recalibrate the way that subsidies are applied to protect our environment and our farmers. And we can’t do that in the EU.
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See Also:
(1) Macron backlash: Violence erupts as EU-Canada trade deal approved – ‘Democracy undermined’
(2) Boris Johnson to tell Europe no deal WILL happen and UK will be ready
(3) Boris Johnson warned over approach to securing Brexit with EU – ‘He’s frightening them’
(4) Turkey Threatens to Reignite European Migrant Crisis
(5) Boris summons Brexit war cabinet meeting as EU declares ‘we stand united!’
