A leading agricultural specialist cast doubts yesterday on the use of minimum stocking densities as a qualifier for deciding agricultural activity and with it subsidy payments post 2015 Cap reforms.
Jeremy Moody warned the Scottish Government faced an “uphill row” in getting the strategy through the European Commission where officials have, in the last fortnight, said the use of stocking densities would breach World Trade Organisation rules.
Mr Moody, the secretary of the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers, told a National Sheep Association Scotland conference on Cap reforms that while minimum stocking densities were seen as a solution to stopping payments to Scotland’s slipper farmers the reality was that the proposed policy faced problems.
But David Barnes, the Scottish Government’s deputy director of agriculture and rural development, disputed the assertion, saying the battle had not yet been lost and that he remains optimistic of a pragmatic solution being struck as every EU member state will have to define agricultural activity, not just Scotland.
He said that the commission had started the talks with a purist approach, but there remained “wriggle room” to negotiate, albeit a variety of measures might ultimately be needed. Mr Moody, however, was not convinced, especially as the latest draft of the delegated rules on activity released over the weekend from Brussels decreed that activity “shall not be linked to type or volume of agricultural production, to production factors employed by farmers in any given year for exercising agricultural activities or requirements for production, rearing or growing of agricultural products”.
“In essence anything that you or I might think is active farming is not deemed acceptable,” said Mr Moody, who added the commission’s stance on avoiding links with farm production had toughened with every draft it issued.
He also warned that those farmers who had diversified their farming operations and gone into other non-farming activities such as retailing, tourism or renewable energy could well lose the entitlement to subsidies if the income from these remain within the agricultural business.
Mr Barnes said the talks on securing the use of minimum stocking densities, the so-called Scottish clause in the Cap reforms, continued.
The government’s head of agricultural development, Ian Davidson, said it wanted at densities of 0.04 or 0.05 livestock units per hectare and an exemption so that the government officials can themselves rule on whether farms below that level receive aid in the new Cap.