Pack hints subsidy will be per hectare

Published on Thursday 26 November 2009 21:40

ALTHOUGH there will be no official announcement until next month, Brian Pack, the man conducting a review on the future of farm support in Scotland, has indicated the system is heading towards subsidies being paid per hectare.

Speaking this week at the Royal Highland Winter Fair at Ingliston, Pack said there were a large number of complex and sometimes conflicting factors that had to be taken into consideration before putting his report together, but there was a general acceptance of area-based payments.

Other than that lead, Pack held his cards close to his chest, although he did admit that there were quite a number of the 100-odd responses that had supported either capping the total payments an individual could receive or specifically supporting family farms.

The biggest problem facing Pack and his team is the request that support is limited to "active farmers". "How do we build in activity and still comply with the World Trade Organisation restrictions?" he asked.

He also admitted that policies that would stop the drift out of livestock production were not easy to draft – or to defend against charges of protectionism.

In drafting the Scottish proposals, he said he was heavily influenced by the evolving Common Agricultural Policy, with the EU either trying to reduce the overall budget or spreading it more evenly among the member states. "It is critical that the EU maintains its support for agriculture. It would be criminal if it did not, after 53 years of doing so," he said.

Pack was speaking at a seminar where the issue of electronic identification of sheep emerged.

George Milne, Scottish development officer at the National Sheep Association, said he hoped there would be an exemption granted from the regulation for those lambs going straight from the farm where they were born to the slaughterhouse.

They accounted for 35 per cent of lambs born in Scotland and the cost of tagging them immediately before slaughter was the equivalent "putting a match to the money" it cost for the tag.

But much to the annoyance of a number of sheep farmers, Pack took an altogether different view, that it opened up opportunities for improving sheep productivity.

Sitting alongside Pack, Richard Webber, director of the Shearwell tag company, who has used tags on his own sheep for a number of years, said there was a great deal of useful information that could be gleaned from them if the slaughterhouse co-operated.

Ian Anderson, executive manager of the Scottish Association of Meat Wholesalers, came down heavily on the side of complete tagging.

"To make the system work, all sheep have to be tagged. There can be no exception to this. We cannot have a mixed system, otherwise critical control points will not work," Anderson said.

The seminar also heard that it was likely that Scotland would operate a voluntary scheme for bluetongue next year, with deputy chief vet Mike Lamont revealing the consensus from a recent industry stakeholders' meeting. This has still to be confirmed by the Scottish Government but will take immediate effect following the ministerial announcement. However, those farmers voluntarily treating their livestock this year will have to bear the full cost of the vaccination.

Lamont also said the government was very supportive of the industry's wish to eradicate bovine viral diarrhoea but this support would not come in the form of compensation cash as happened with brucellosis. Rather "we will do what we can to make it a practical reality".