Lib Dems back small farmers over ‘botched’ ELM rollout

Transitioning from the old CAP to the new Environmental Land Management (ELM) schemes had been “botched”, leaving small and tenanted farmers in a precarious position, according to Liberal Democrat agriculture spokesman Tim Farron.

Speaking at an NFU reception at the Lib Dems’ conference in Brighton on Monday (16 September), Mr Farron said the principles behind the ELM scheme – to reward farmers for providing public goods – were worthy.

See also: Labour under pressure to rule out cuts to farming budget

But the failure by the previous Conservative government to recognise food production as of paramount importance had jeopardised farmer engagement with the new schemes.

“What has been missing from the ELM project is any acknowledgement that farmers’ chief job and chief motivation is to produce food,” he said.  

While the phasing out of the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) had gone “like clockwork”, the failure to have its replacement ready – and to get more than £350m back to farmers over the past three years – had had “brutal” consequences.

Upland crisis

Mr Farron mentioned a young hill farmer he met at the recent Westmorland Show in Cumbria, who was going to lose £40,000 in BPS once the transition is complete.

The farmer had already paid £6,000 in consultant fees to understand and access the Sustainable Farming Incentive, for which he stands to receive just £14,000.

Just to stay afloat, he had had to double livestock numbers.

The mental pressure this was putting on all farmers, who were in danger of losing farms that had been in their families for generations, represented a huge human cost to the industry.

Beneficiaries 

Meanwhile, the main beneficiaries of the new schemes were likely to be larger farmers and landowners, who had the scale and capacity to access what public funding is available.

“The people who are not in the schemes are the small tenant farmers, the hill farmers, the family farmers,” said Mr Farron.

“My message to the Labour party is that it is the proletariat of the countryside that you are harming.”

Lib Dem’s MP for Orkney and Shetland, Alistair Carmichael, who also chairs the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs committee in Westminster, shared Mr Farron’s concerns.

“That the Conservatives would pursue policy that would work to the benefit of the big landowners is hardly surprising,” he said.

“That the Labour party would stick to the same schemes and actually work against the interests of the small family farm – tenant farms or small, hill farm owner occupiers – I think that is unforgivable.

“It demonstrates a lack of understanding of how farming works.”