Costing the countryside

Our MPs have betrayed us. They have handed the control of our countryside to unelected Commissioners in Brussels.

The result – as with fishing – has been disastrous.

Tens of thousands of miles of hedgerow have been ripped out over the years to make way for large scale, heavily subsidised, industrial farming.

The figures show that the EU spent £33bn of taxpayers' money on agricultural subsidies in 2005, which is 46% of the total budget.

This was meant to make us self-sufficient in food, to improve the efficiency of our farmers, assist the small farmer, and bring us cheaper food.

In fact, it has done the opposite.

Expensive food

Britain is now a net importer of food.

In 2004 we imported £19.1 billion of food and exported £8.9 billion.

Nor has it resulted in cheaper food at the check-out.

On the contrary, as Barry Gardiner (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) confirmed in a recent written Parliamentary answer:
'Our latest provisional estimate, for 2004, shows a cost of the CAP to UK consumers of around £4 billion'.

In other words, the cost to the typical British shopper is £20 a week.

Nor do these subsidies help the small scale farmer. The most recent figures show that the largest 2% of farms receive 24% of all handouts while the smallest 60% of farms receive just 10%.

The sugar of subsidy

This means that most of the handouts go to the biggest farmers - large agribusinesses and hereditary landowners.

The sugar company Tate and Lyle was the biggest recipient of handouts in the UK in 2005, raking in £127m.

Because the handouts have encouraged large scale industrial style farming the effect on the environment has been disastrous.

The destruction of hedgerows, one of the richest sources of biodiversity, is just one of the many hidden environmental consequences of the CAP.

The extensive use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilisers, has also had a damaging effect on the rich diversity of our rural environment.

While it is very difficult to quantify environmental damage in monetary terms, one estimate is that intensive farming in the EU causes avoidable environmental damage costing around £6 billion a year.

A detailed study estimated the cost to the countryside inflicted by industrial scale farming to be £2.3 billion a year in the UK alone.

As with the fishing industry, the EU has belatedly woken up to the damage it has inflicted on the environment and is desperately trying to make amends. But, as with many of their responses, the effect is often the opposite of what they intend.

We now have the absurdity of subsidies being paid to farmers to do nothing with their land, and of farmers being paid subsidies based not on what they produce this year, but on what they produced years ago!

Even pro-European Union figures like the former red-tape Tsar, Chris Haskins, admit that the CAP has been a disaster.

Writing for the pro-EU Foreign Policy Centre, Haskins said of the Common Agricultural Policy that: ' Taxpayers feel they are getting poor value for their money, consumers believe they are paying too much for their food, environmentalists are convinced that the CAP is encouraging bad farming practices, businesses complain that they cannot achieve more trade liberalisation because of protectionist farm policies, and many farmers recognise that the policies are not addressing their real concerns'.

The EU's disastrous farm policies also hurt the Third World. Many believe that it was Peter Mandelson's refusal to cut trade-distorting farm subsidies that led to the collapse of the recent trade talks – which had been billed as the way to make poverty history.

Oxfam's key trade adviser, Claire Godfrey, is in no doubt that: 'The Common Agricultural Policy lavishes subsidies on the UK's wealthiest farmers and biggest landowners at the expense of millions of poorest farmers in the developing world'.

Her colleague Celine Charveriat , head of Make Trade Fair, has been equally forthright in expressing Oxfam's unhappiness with the approach to the Third World by Brussels: 'The EU has signalled its willingness to sacrifice poor countries in order to protect its own dated and grossly unfair farm policies'.

The problem that Oxfam and other campaigners face, however, is that there is nothing the British people can do to change this situation because farming and trade policies are now decided in Brussels not Britain.

If people really want to:

• protect the countryside
• improve the environment
• end trade-distorting subsidies
• and aid the people of the Third World through trade.

Then they should speak out now and demand a referendum on returning these powers from Brussels to Britain.

We believe that if enough people speak out we can get a referendum on the return of this and other vital powers from Brussels to Britain.

Join the 87% of people who say they want a say in getting these powers back – and demand a referendum. It is time our elected politicians listened to the people and stopped slavishly obeying the rules and regulations spewing out of Brussels.

Footnote

Where percentages have been quoted research was carried out by Yougov 6th-10th October 2006. 2205 responents were surveyed. Respondents who refused to answer or didn't have an opinion have been excluded from the figures.

Related articles

To see the European Commission statistics quoted at: Click here

'EU subsidies deny Africa's farmers of their livelihood' by Maxine Frith in The Independent: Click here

Go to

How to Reform the Common Agricultural Policy by Jack Thurston. Foreign Policy Centre: Click here

For information on the Common Agricultural policy see the BBC website at: Click here

For the Oxfam press release May 2006 see: Click here

Official sites

The Economic and Social Research Council: Click here

Hansard report Written Answers July 25 2006: Click here

European Commission Directorate of Agriculture and Rural Development: Click here

Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Click here