Labour has left Farmers Facing Agriculture Budget Cliff Edge says NFU

{Farmers Facing Agriculture Budget Cliff Edge – Earth and Leaf editorial}

{extract below}

Labour has left farmers facing agriculture budget cliff edge, says NFU

Extract below:

Farmers are facing a “cliff edge” as the Labour government refuses to commit to maintaining the agriculture budget for England, the president of the National Farmers’ Union has said.

The issue is one of the first pressures Labour is facing over its tight fiscal rules, along with a rebellion on the party’s refusal to remove the two-child benefit cap.

Conservative MPs have said they plan to challenge the government on its failure to commit to the agricultural budget, which Labour says it will not comment on until after the spending review later this year.

Since the UK left the EU, it is no longer in the European common agricultural policy, which ensured steady payments for farmers directly linked to how much land they managed. Instead, each devolved nation has its own government payments scheme.

The previous government committed to spending £2.4bn a year in England on payments for farmers, mostly linked to environmental improvements made on their land, to replace area-based payments similar to those in the EU scheme. However, this assurance ends at the end of the calendar year.

Farmers will not hear about whether these payments will continue at current rates until the spending review in the autumn, a spokesperson for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs told the Guardian.

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