Byline: STEVE DUBe
A COMMITTEE of MPs has called for a return to subsidies for hill and upland farmers based on the number of livestock they keep.
The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee said headage payments were needed to tackle hardship and maintain some of the country's most "dramatic and cherished landscapes".
It was also essential for upland communities to get access to broadband internet and affordable housing, and the Government should help farmers to make money out of managing the land to provide benefits to society such as clean water.
In Wales the Tir Mynydd hill and upland subsidy, still calculated on the number of livestock a farmer managed at the start of the 21st century, will disappear completely in 2013.
Welsh farmers will have to sign up to the all-in-one Tir Gofal agri-environment scheme, with its demands and restrictions, in order to receive any subsidy on top of an already diminishing single farm payment subsidy.
A Welsh Assembly Government spokesperson said: "A return to headage payments would not be possible as it is against the overall decoupling direction of the CAP taken by Europe and is outside the World Trade Organisation green box requirements for EU policies.
"The issue of overgrazing is dealt with through cross compliance and 'good agricultural and environmental condition' standards.
"There may be other approaches that could assist and we will consider options as part of the CAP reform modelling but recoupling is not an option."
The MPs' report calls for a strategy with a clear, costed plan that sets out how to ensure hill farming is viable and can thrive in the uplands.
Headage payments linked to the number of animals they owned were replaced with direct payments to farmers amid concerns that they could lead to overgrazing and distort market prices. Upland farmers are also eligible for environmentallyfriendly funding schemes. The Efra report says a return to headage payments, accompanied by environmental conditions to prevent over-stocking, could be fairer for hill farmers, who need to be able to diversify into other land management activities, such as being paid for carbon storage and managing water supplies.
Committee chairwoman Anne McIntosh said: "The Government must find a better way to pay farmers for maintaining our unique upland landscapes.
"Headage payments, together with appropriate environmental safeguards, could provide the answer for these remote farming areas."
She added: "Government must ensure farm businesses can provide a decent income for hard-pressed hill farmers.
"Farmers in the uplands already do a huge amount of unpaid work that benefits the public.
"The challenge for ministers is to find a way to reward farmers for those public benefits while preserving their way of life and wonderful landscapes of our uplands."
A Defra spokesman said hill farmers face real challenges and make an important contribution to the environment and landscape as well as agriculture. "That is why we promised in our structural reform plan to develop affordable measures of support for hill farmers, in order to help put them on a more secure and sustainable footing for the future."
The Tenant Farmers Association welcomed the report as echoing many of the issues it raised in written and oral evidence to the committee, including the need to make farming the cornerstone of activity in the uplands, reconsider the benefit of headage payments and ensure that agri-environment schemes recognise the complex nature of land tenure in the hills.
TFA chief executive George Dunn said: "We agree wholeheartedly with the conclusion of the select committee that we need a new approach to rewarding farmers for managing the uplands.
"We believe that it was wrong to move support away from breeding animals which are integral to the management of the upland environment. It is important that people are rewarded for their work on managing the environment according to the full costs the farmer has to pay and the risk which he takes. However, it is also important to ensure that mechanisms are put in place to prevent the benefit being siphoned off in higher land values or higher rents."
But the Campaign for National Parks said reintroducing headage payments would be a retrograde step.
The charity said "forwardlooking" support was needed for hill farmers in national parks, and said headage payments between 1976 and 2003 resulted in overstocking of national park moorlands and fells - leading to soil erosion, species losses and water pollution.
CNP senior policy officer Christine Reid said: "To reintroduce such payments would be a hugely regressive step for hill farmers and for national park landscapes.
"Instead, we want to see hill farmers adequately supported for responsible land management, building on current agri-environment schemes - this will help to deliver the full range of benefits that our national parks can provide. "Alongside public payments, efforts should be redoubled to identify appropriate market mechanisms that could support some of this management, such as carbon off-setting schemes to restore peat soils and plant more trees."
She said forthcoming reform of the European Common Agriculture Policy gives Defra the opportunity to improve rewards for farmers by redistributing CAP money towards those who deliver the biggest benefits.
Active upland farmers in protected landscapes such as national parks could be given a higher base payment in return for basic environmental maintenance, or they could opt to receive more money for specific improvements such as the water quality in lakes or maintaining vegetation on the fells to help reduce flood risk.
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