SofteningTheBlow

AGRICULTUREwere worth £520 million and support payments to ‘lessfavoured areas’ were £122 million. 6I spoke to the National Farmers’ Union (England andWales), which has some 55,000 members. It representsabout 83,000 farm holdings of over 50 acres (some farmershaving multiple holdings) and ‘estimates that more than70 per cent of full time [UK] farmers are…members’. 7The NFU is headquartered near Royal Leamington Spaand has offices in Brussels. I met with Martin Haworth,Director of Policy and Communications, and Dr AndrewClark, Head of Policy Services, to discuss their thoughtson leaving the EU.Fears and worst case scenarioTariffs and subsidiesI asked what the NFU’s tariff concerns would be from abadly-managed Brexit. Mr Haworth explained:‘With tariffs, for those people who export, it’s not just themon their own, it’s a combination. The people who advocate ourwithdrawal from the European Union, their strongest or mostconsistently repeated arguments are that the European Unionimposes tariffs on imports and therefore we could get rid ofthose if we were outside the European Union. And those peoplealso, generally speaking, are opposed to farming subsidies, sothe absolute nightmare scenario would be that we’d be outsidethe European Union, we’d lose our access to the single market,we’d have lower tariff barriers so food prices would drop andfarmers’ prices would come down, and our farmers wouldn’t besubsidised, whereas our competitors would be, both in Europeand in large parts of the world.‘So that’s the absolute perfect storm scenario, and veryconsistent with what opponents of European Union membershipgenerally have in mind. That’s why we’re rather nervous.’· 9 ·