Landowners to lose EU farm handouts

20 May 2008 05:33am

Britain's biggest landowners will lose handouts from Brussels worth hundreds of millions of pounds under plans unveiled to modernise European agriculture.

Streamlined rules for the controversial Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) will also free up farmers to respond to rising world food prices, and encourage more environmentally-friendly farming.

The new proposals, which need approval from EU agriculture ministers, are part of a CAP reform programme launched five years ago.

Cash handouts to farmers regardless of production have already been banished, virtually eradicating the legendary milk and wine lakes and butter and beef mountains.

And the CAP's share of the entire 75 billions pounds-a-year EU budget has dropped from more than 70% to about 43%.

But now the commission wants a ceiling on the level of subsidy any single landowner can receive curbing EU support to landowners such as the Duke of Westminster, the Duke of Marlborough, as well as to farms owned by the Queen and the Prince of Wales.

The aim is to divert the savings into rural development and environmental protection programmes, as green farming becomes a CAP priority.

 The Queen's farmland on the Sandringham estate and at Windsor Castle are believed to qualify for CAP subsidies worth more than half a million pounds under current rules.

If the new subsidy limits are approved, almost half would be redirected to step up agriculture-linked "green" programmes to boost renewable energy use and improve water management, as well as tackling declining wildlife ands funding rural improvements such as drystone walls.

The plans also end so-called "set-aside" - the practice of paying farmers to leave land fallow.

© The Press Association