CAP negotiations expected to see British single farm payments cut

BRITISH farmers are likely to see the annual payment they receive from the government fall in coming years, Britain’s farming minister Jim Paice said, adding he favoured its eventual abolition as global food prices rise.

“The single farm payment is going to go down,” Mr Paice said at the Oxford Farming Conference, referring to the expected outcome of negotiations about the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2013.

The EU’s executive has proposed freezing agricultural spending at 2013 levels until 2020, after resisting pressure to cut its farm budget to reduce costs and fund areas such as climate change.

Britain, Sweden and others had called for cuts to the CAP budget after 2013, but a majority of EU governments led by France want farm spending to remain stable after the policy is reformed in 2014.

This would lead to a slow decline in its value in real terms, while available funds are expected to be more evenly spread as backing for farmers in the eastern EU are brought closer to the level of their counterparts in the western EU.