What will be the impact on British farming post Brexit?The impact as I see it depends on many factors, the size of the enterprise, its location within the UK and importantly, will the new PM be prepared to stand up for British farmers in future trade negotiations with the EU or further afield?
The question of farm subsidies is oft asked or what's currently known as the Single Farm Payment. This is a subsidy currently paid to active farmers on the basis of actual acreage farmed. Currently it is worth around €329 per hectare. Additional subsidies are also paid to young farmers and farmers who introduce new woodland or farm on a sustainable or organic basis. Hill farmers used to attract an additional payment but I understand this has been phased out recently for British farmers.
These payments in one form or another have always been made to farmers. Incentives to build new barns and reclaim bogland were also available at one time but more recently British farmers have been excluded from such incentives. Go across the border to the Irish Republic however and one can see that Irish farmers are receiving much more support than British farmers. British farmers are in effect subsidizing their Irish neighbours, something which will now rightly come to an end.
It must also be remembered that the subsidies paid to British farmers are intended to keep the price of farm produce down and thus affordable to the public at large. If there were no subsidies the price of farm products like meats, grain, dairy products etc would increase significantly putting a strain on the budgets of those who can least afford it.
French farmers have consistently received the greatest share of the EU agricultural subsidies budget but they have now priced themselves out of the market. They are in big trouble and are having great difficulty selling their meat products since sanctions were imposed by the EU on Russia, their biggest market.
French farmers are in open revolt at Brussels and EU policy.
Indeed, the growing belligerence of farmers across Europe in their efforts to extract more money in the form of subsidies is perhaps the best reason yet to end this fatally flawed European project and its dysfunctional currency. Without the interference of Brussels, countries would be free to manage their own farming industries in the best interests of their own populations and trade agricultural produce more freely with developing markets where there is greater demand.
Uneconomic farming practices across Europe would then be replaced by successful farms, which are ultimately the best guarantee to food security.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/commodities/11858718/Only-French-farmers-will-save-us-from-the-madness-of-Europe.html6