No that winds me up as well
- Thread starter nickk
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Kayos
Gone......
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Am I right in thinking you are in Wales?
SuDS is all I can say, bloody Welsh government
No they aren't they can look them up. There's no secrets. Most farmers will tell you exactly what they get.
Even smallish farms(relatively speaking) could be getting £100K +
Defra, UK - CAP Payments Search
cap-payments.defra.gov.uk
brightspark
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do they nowt just the hard luck story most of em
brewdexta
The biggest tool in the box
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When I claimed farm subsidies it was peanuts. We got somewhere around 300 quid a year for our 4 acres which mended about 10m of dry stone wall.
We now fall under the minimum acreage, it's just not worth the effort so probably a good thing. We could pair up with a neighbour to exceed the minimum and jointly apply but not really worth it.
Being a hill farm (just), we didn't qualify for most of the arable subsidies and our acreage is too small for commercial livestock. We do have the option of renting an additional 20+ acres, but only if we fence it. The cost of that would wipe out any profit for quite a while.
I did toy with buying 40 acres of pasture a few years ago. But I sat down with a proper hill farmer and went through some figures and decided it wasn't worth the effort even with subsidies.
I don't think of 'em as subsidies, I regard them as part payment towards the real cost of production. Milk is cheaper than bottled water nowadays, how is that possible?
We now fall under the minimum acreage, it's just not worth the effort so probably a good thing. We could pair up with a neighbour to exceed the minimum and jointly apply but not really worth it.
Being a hill farm (just), we didn't qualify for most of the arable subsidies and our acreage is too small for commercial livestock. We do have the option of renting an additional 20+ acres, but only if we fence it. The cost of that would wipe out any profit for quite a while.
I did toy with buying 40 acres of pasture a few years ago. But I sat down with a proper hill farmer and went through some figures and decided it wasn't worth the effort even with subsidies.
I don't think of 'em as subsidies, I regard them as part payment towards the real cost of production. Milk is cheaper than bottled water nowadays, how is that possible?
Most of the smaller hill farms around here aren't getting much - most less than 30K but there are the odd few getting 100k.
I went for a drive through Herefordshire on the weekend - lovely area.
You could tell how much richer it was there than any hill farmer could ever hope to get.
The farmer just down the road from us keeps trying to get PP to put 2000 houses on his land. He doesn't want to be a farmer any more.
The problem for him is his land is the other side of the county boarder, so no chance. Daventry don't want to deal with the collections and new infrastructure and Market Harborough don't want 2000 new families using their facilities and not paying for it.
I guess it depends on how you look at it, £300 for potentially doing nothing but let sheep eat the grass.
I think we were getting around £1500 for doing nothing more than grazing/making hay.
I grew up on a farm and my brother is shearer, he thinks they should stop the payments all together. It's really common in Herefordshire and Wales that you see people who have no mortgage, everything comes out of the farm account and all they need to do is put food on the table. It means they can get away with running businesses that are not viable.
When he was in the UK my brother's accountant told him a story about a farmer he dealt with. Accountant asked the farmer how is year had been the farmer said it was pretty good as they made £90K profit. The accountant suggested he'd actually made a loss but the farmer couldn't understand it. It turns out he'd had £130K in subsidies and even though he was supposed to be running a viable business he'd managed to lose £40K of money he'd been given.
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We used to see Welsh hill farmers paying top dollar for grazing in Herefordshire, they came under "severely disadvantaged" scheme but if they associated grazing land with their holdings they could claim the payments on everything. This meant they priced local people out of the market because they were getting the highest subsidies on the best land.
This is the problem. If people were willing to pay what the product is really worth (be it meat or milk) then there would be no need for subsidies. But while Joe Public insist on the cheapest product without a care for the welfare or environment it was reared/grown in, farms will struggle to remain profitable.
Supermarkets use milk as a loss leader (god knows why as i dont know anyone who knows what they pay for a pint of milk let alone anyone who selects where they shop based on the place that sells the cheapest milk) so they always drive the cost per litre/pint as low as they can... that has a knock on effect on the farmer.
We get £100/acre for some of our land for grazing so even before the subsidies you'd be getting around £4k a year without doing anything at all. I fully understand the whole not financially viable argument but it's unlikely that land will drop too far in value plus when your kids inherit there won't be any tax and when you retire £4K may be enough to make a real difference.
I bought 2x 4pint jugs of milk in M&S at BP Station last night, £1.15 each. I pretty sure it's quite a bit more in Asda
addjunkie
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But 4 k per year would take awhile to repay cost of the 40 acres.
What many dont see either is the cost of rent for tenants….oddly roughly the same as the supplement!
We own 12 acres so no supplement, but used to rent some land too, just under 100 acres of rubbish hill….it wasnt worth the hassle, with sheep.
I wondered why they used to do that.
My ex girlfriend lived in a lovely old hill farm in the Brecon Beacons. They always used to send the sheep off to "exotic" places for the Winter!
Quite a big farm - over 1000 acres - mainly mountains - and 2000 sheep.
Madness destroying good agricultural land to save the planet
Yep!
Yep!. But its not about saving anthing.
Dont look for logic, look for the trail of money. If ,well when, food prices go up a very small number of people will become considerably more wealthy. Its not an accident.
We used have a chap come from Builth Wells, he had sheep in multiple places in our area. Always paid over the odds and always paid as soon as the sheep arrived. He used to work it though, it's an hour to Builth and he would be in the area checking sheep at 05:00 when he did his weekly fly by.
Totally get that argument and £4k wouldn't even cover a mortgage. 40 acres could be £100-400K depending on location and the reality is you'd be better buying houses of the same value.
It's only going to get worse for farmers as the Minister for Victorian England has stated that he doesn't care for food standards that match the EU.
I'm also sure the the Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) are going to make sure that the UK farming industry dies off in the same way that manufacturing did.
I don't like to make a potentially political point here, but;
The sad thing is that those that are in the sector insisted on bringing it on themselves. The end game is low regulation, free market capitalism. A Singapore on Thames does not support agriculture in the same way that Singapore doesn't.
I'm also sure the the Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) are going to make sure that the UK farming industry dies off in the same way that manufacturing did.
I don't like to make a potentially political point here, but;
The sad thing is that those that are in the sector insisted on bringing it on themselves. The end game is low regulation, free market capitalism. A Singapore on Thames does not support agriculture in the same way that Singapore doesn't.
