Big landowners who do no real farming activity “other than throwing a few cattle or sheep or donkeys” on large acreages are in Fine Gael’s firing line in the next CAP.

Fine Gael MEP for Ireland South, Seán Kelly has fired the opening salvo in the debate around the definition of an active farmer.

Kelly made the remarks at the launch of the party’s report on the upcoming CAP reform. The report states that the stocking rate of 0.1LU/ha to be eligible for direct payments should be examined.

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This is to “ensure that funding is directed for farmers who are operating full time, with provision for a lower stocking rate to be set in specific areas/sectors where production is lower due to external factors like the environment or regulations”.

Big funds

Kelly has said that “there are people drawing big funds who shouldn’t be drawing them”.

“There are people whose primary activity isn’t agriculture and people who have the basic minimum and who do no real activity other than throwing a few cattle or sheep or donkeys on a couple of hundred or a couple of thousand acres of land just to qualify.

Kelly said that the question of what is an active farmer will be one of the hardest things to define under the next CAP

“That’s not fair when the farmer who is actually producing the food which goes on the table is not getting the same crack of the whip,”he told the Irish Farmers Journal.

Kelly said that the question of what is an active farmer will be one of the hardest things to define under the next CAP. He said that “livestock units per hectare will have to be part of it”.

On the pace of negotiations, he said that it is almost impossible for the Irish Government to complete talks on the EU budget and the CAP by the end of this year, but if they can get the framework completed, that would be “hunky-dory”.