Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

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00.01am GMT Wednesday 16 February 2011
Farming in the Uplands 17
35. Will Cockbain, uplands spokesman for the NFU, explained that hill farmers are
restricted in their business choices due to the limitations of climate and environment. He
added that as hill farmers were at the end of the livestock production chain they were “very
vulnerable” to price fluctuations and had nowhere to pass on any increases in their costs. 78
Upland farms are also relatively poorly supported by the Single Payment Scheme, under
which the per hectare payment rate broadly reflects the old production-linked subsidy
level.
36. The Minister told us that hill farmers deserved extra support because of the additional
challenges of farming in the uplands, but added that any additional funding would have to
come from existing resources. 79 He explained that there were obstacles to providing
additional funds through environmental stewardship schemes and therefore they would
have to “...come out of the Rural Development Programme money and, yes, that means
something else will be cut”. 80 Sources of additional income for hill farmers fall principally
into three categories: farming activities; diversification (such as tourism); and developing
additional land-based sources of income (such as carbon storage). While acknowledging
that grazing livestock farming is currently almost always economically unviable without
public payments, Defra argued that the upland environment provides farmers with
business opportunities both through diversification into tourism and the development of
markets for public goods. 81 In this context public goods means mainly environmental and
landscape benefits that farmers provide and that the public value; but for which
traditionally there has been no market mechanism through which farmers can generate an
income.
37. William Worsley, President of the CLA told us that in the uplands, while other
business opportunities may exist in certain areas, livestock farming was the “bedrock”. 82
Similarly, Mr Cockbain told us that “You have to recognise that it is profitable farming that
is the start and everything else is on the back of that.” 83
38. Farming should be the primary activity of hill farms. The Government’s
forthcoming uplands strategy must address how, as the first priority, farming activities
can be enhanced and made more efficient to increase hill farm incomes. We accept that
farming will not necessarily provide sufficient income for some hill farms to continue.
The Government’s uplands strategy should therefore consider the barriers to
diversification and new markets and how best to enable farmers in the uplands to
exploit those business opportunities.
Single Payment Scheme
39. In 2005 the UK introduced the Single Payment Scheme (SPS)—the main source of EU
subsidy for UK farmers. Under the scheme the previous production-linked payments were
78 Q 102
79 Qq 170–171
80 Q 171
81 Ev 81
82 Q 102
83 Q 103