After thinking about it, the Cabinet Secretary’s announcement comes as a big relief.
It was never going to be good news for the beef sector, we all knew that, but it could have been so much worse.
We are pleased with the doubling of coupled payments for beef calves and with only the first 10 calves getting a doubled payment the base payment should be upwards of €100 (£80). The extra €65 (£52) for island calves should help them even if it doesn’t result in many extra calves.
Stepped internal conversion was essential for established businesses to allow time for beef producers to restructure.
If our members average loss of 30% happened overnight many businesses would also have disappeared overnight.
My own business was set to lose over 40% that now is an 8% annual reduction something that I can cope with, just.
The £45million beef improvement package is an essential lifeline to beef businesses. If properly designed and targeted, it has the potential to give the industry the tools to improve our technical efficiency and financial performance to cope with reduced public support.
A few businesses already make a profit before subsidy – we must grasp the opportunity and all get there.
Using your claimed area in 2013 was another essential to stop the land grab and ensure money goes to active farmers.
I hope his [Lochhead] robust measures do deliver the planned reduction of 600,000 hectares of inactive land. This then gives the potential to boost area payment rates.
There is still a lot of fine detail to sort out which could make a huge difference one way or the other. Let’s hope that the devil is not in the detail.
Marks out of 10, I would say a 5.
P.S. I heard a figure last week at Scotsheep that Northumberland has lost 60% of its suckler cows since 2004, the result of shifting to area payments.