MEP Alyn Smith urges fairer CAP share for Scotland

This was the message yesterday from two MEPs, Alyn Smith and Struan Stevenson, who told a European Commission seminar in Aberdeen that the wind of change was blowing towards support for active farming and food production.

Smith, a member of the European Parliament's agricultural committee, said a proposal from the committee, which had been accepted by the parliament, that no member state should receive less than two-thirds of the average support per hectare paid to all EU countries, would be beneficial to Scotland if agreed in the final package.

"If the two-thirds proposal applied at present, it would mean another 200 million a year for Scotland," said Smith. "We receive less than our fair share under the present arrangements."

But he admitted it would depend on the final budget allocated to the CAP, which would be decided by finance ministers, although there was growing political support in Brussels for the budget to be retained at the present level.

The need for continued support for farming, and the adoption of genetic modification of crops to achieve the ambitious targets for food production set by Europe, was stressed by Stevenson.

"We face a double whammy in trying to achieve the objective of doubling world food production by 2080," he said. "On the one hand, we have six million more mouths - equating to the population of Scotland - to feed every month, while on the other, we are losing 250 million hectares of productive land a year - equating to a country the size of Ukraine - because of climate change."

He added: "We have had food riots in every continent except Europe but we will finish up with riots in Europe if there is not enough food to go round."

Organic farming would not provide an answer. "We are losing all our best scientists in Europe because of our head-in-the-sand attitude to GM," said Stevenson. "Nobody has died as a result of eating food from GM material as far as I am aware and 125 million hectares of GM crops are being grown by 13.5 million farmers in 25 countries around the world. Ironically, 36 people have recently died as a result of eating organically grown bean sprouts."

Both speakers agreed that the definition of the term "active farming" would be critical in ensuring that support was directed towards food production, ending the current anomaly of non-active farmers being eligible to claim Single Farm Payment.

Stevenson strongly defended the CAP which, he said, was costing every person in Europe only 23p per day.