More cash to cut beet growing

EVEN bigger subsidies will be offered to EU farmers next month to persuade more to stop growing sugar beet.

Leaks of new proposals on the way from the European Commission indicate that pay-offs to farmers may be tripled because the Commission officials say that sugar market reforms agreed in 2005 are not delivering quickly enough.

It was agreed then to pay the sugar industry €730 in 2005, decreasing annually to €520 in 2009, and to pay sugar beet farmers €105, decreasing to €73 per tonne, for production removed from the market.

But the measures have failed to reach the target of clearing four million tonnes of excess sugar production from the EU market.

Hence the proposals to cut down the numbers of sugar refineries and sugar beet farms in Europe, expected to go before EU agriculture ministers on May 7, to make the switch more attractive.

The EU sugar lobby, CEFS, has called for farmers to receive “a reasonable top up aid”, and for sugar refiners to be allowed convert to renewable energy production, while keeping their pay-offs.