European farming supports must be better targeted at active farmers and not those who simply have the money to buy farmland, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Christophe Hansen has said.

There are a “lot of differences” in how member states are defining active farmers, he told the Irish Farmers' Association's (IFA) AGM on Thursday, adding that he can see examples of this happening in his own country of Luxembourg.

“There are people that have not much to do with farming, but they have the means to pay better prices for land than farmers do and they buy up land, so the real farmers don't get the land anymore,” he said.

“They put some extensive Highlanders [cattle] or something like that on it. They are quite inventive to [meet the definition of a farmer]…”

Definition

“And in fact, it's not an active farmer. It's not a productive farmer. And that is something where I have, we in my member state, a problem with that definition.”

The commissioner, who hails from a farming family and whose late brother took over the family farm, continued: “I think we have to look that generally, that the money gets there where there's really somebody producing, the production factor. I think that would be something very important to take into account.”

While he conceded that “there will always be, let's say, intelligent people to find their ways around”, the diversion of public funding to people who are not active farmers “is something I think we really have to address”.

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