Brexit should not see Farmers getting special status.

In many rural areas at election time you will filled the Hedge Rows resplendent in posters for the Tory candidate .

It is important that we distinguish between many of the struggling  Hill Farmers and the "Barley Barons " who are still making comfortable living.

It is odd however despite the problems of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that so many farmers voted for Brexit reliant as they are on EU subsidies.

A prime example is that of The family farming business of Pro Brexit Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies received EU subsidies totalling nearly £100,000 in a year

So it is perhaps not surprising Newport West's Paul Flynn sits on the Commons' environment committee that a special fund to prepare farmers for Brexit would in some cases be "income support for super rich",

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The Labour MP said a special fund should not be set up to help.

Committee chairman, Tory Neil Parish, said the government should help farmers adapt to new trading circumstances.
Farmers have already been guaranteed subsidies at the current EU level until the 2022 election and the proposed fund would be in addition to this. 

Mr Flynn told BBC Radio Wales' Sunday Supplement programme:

 "The special fund is rather like asking for your cake, eating it, and then demanding a second cake."

The BBC report that

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, states without an EU-UK trade deal, farm exports face tariffs from March 2019.
 
It acknowledges the UK government's intention is to agree a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU, but says "there is no guarantee that this will occur".
The fund would therefore help the UK's agricultural sector as it adapts to the post-Brexit environment.
But Mr Flynn questioned this, saying in England, "the main bulk of the support" - one in every five pounds - "is given in subsidy to a millionaire or billionaire".

 He said.

"The only industry that has been guaranteed to have funding for the foreseeable future is farming,"
"At the moment we are wasting millions in giving grants to farmers who are rich. This is income support for the super rich in may cases,"

In what to me was a rather confusing article in the Wasting Mule by

David Williamson writes

Lamb farmers in particular are concerned about the consequences of a post-Brexit free trade; they fear the UK market will be flooded with cheap produce. Hill farmers across Wales have had a tough enough time balancing the books for generations; they will hope they will not be numbered among the casualties of Brexit.

David Lidington, the nearest thing Theresa May has to a Deputy Prime Minister, is preparing a big speech intended to address the impact of Brexit on the devolved nations. Last year his predecessor, Damian Green, let slip the scale of worry in Whitehall about what will happen if governments introduce different schemes to protect farming, saying:

“We need to make sure that we don’t have subsidy wars to try to help sheep farmers, some in Scotland and some in Wales and so on.”

This is not a  class thing, but you can wonder why those adorning the hedgerows of the Vale of Glamorgan  with Tory posters  will be given aid after Brexit, whilst areas where the homes portray posters of a different  colour face no help at all.


I do not believe  any farmer should be punished whether they voted for Brexit or not , but if it turns out to be the economic disaster that i expect it will be . I  am with Paul Flynn and don't see why farmers should be singled out for aid, as  our equally fragile manufacturing injury goes to the wall.