Agriculture cuts
Richard Halleron considers whether agriculture will be able to persuade the general public of its worth.
Speculation is rife at the present time that the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) will have to achieve cuts of around £25 million over the next four years, if it is to help meet Sammy Wilson’s overall budgetary targets for Northern Ireland. However, we won’t have long to wait for the details. Michelle Gildernew will be making an announcement on this issue during October, after which it will be a case of discussing the matter with all the farming stakeholder groups in the run up to 1 April next year.
No doubt, organisations like the Ulster Farmers’ Union will be pressing for greater efficiencies to be achieved within the DARD network. But this approach will only get Michelle Gildernew so far down the track. It looks like she will have to sell off a proportion of the DARD estate in order to meet whatever budgetary targets are set by the Department of Finance.
During the summer, Northern Ireland’s Horticulture and Plant Breeding Station at Loughgall came under the spotlight as a possible ‘for sale’ option. However, the thinking now is that it could be easier – and less controversial – for DARD to consider selling off part of the Forest Service estate. The agency controls large areas of commercial forestry which have no use as part of the organisation’s commitment to provide woodland for recreational use by the general public.
In Michelle Gildernew’s defence, she has already made it clear that she will not act to cut front-line services to farmers and agriculture as a whole. And as far as can be ascertained, this will include keeping intact the current educational services on offer from the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (Cafre).
But the budgetary cuts demanded by the Executive at Stormont are only part of the financial maelstrom that is buffeting agriculture at the present time. Some months back the European Commission in Brussels announced that it was imposing fines on DARD for what were classified as errors made in the administration of the single farm scheme. This decision was taken in the wake of reviews carried out by Commission staff into the procedures put in place by DARD to manage the scheme, which was established five years ago. The initial fines were estimated at £30 million. However, in true Brussels’ fashion the bureaucrats kept digging and uncovered more ‘irregularities’ with the result that the final ‘bill’ imposed on DARD could come in at around £100 million.
To be fair, DARD has been a hostage to fortune on this issue. The irregularities identified by Brussels relate specifically to the correctness of farm maps, which are notoriously inaccurate. It has also transpired that almost every region of the EU has been caught with its trousers down on this matter. So it would not be right to portray DARD as a hotbed of subversion.
But taxpayers’ money will be used to cover the final fine imposed by Brussels. And no doubt this will hit the headlines in a very negative way – where local agriculture is concerned – at some stage over the coming months.
They say that timing is everything in life. It just so happens that the coming weeks and months will also see the start of negotiations in Brussels leading up to the next full review of the CAP. In this context, the stakes could not be higher for local agriculture.
Given the recent international economic downturn, Brussels is already flagging up the fact that its finances will be significantly curtailed moving forward. Irrespective of whatever final budget is agreed for agriculture, the issue of how it is distributed around the 27 member states will also prove to be significant for farmers in this part of the world. This time around, the agri-industries in those countries which have most recently joined the EU will be looking for what they regard as a more equitable sharing out of the EU cake. If this is acceded to the end result will be a net movement of agri-funding from west to east across Europe.
So as we enter the winter of 2010-2011 agriculture in Northern Ireland has a number of ‘money-related’ matters on its mind. Significantly, all of these issues interface, directly or indirectly, with the allocation of taxpayers’ money. The weeks and months ahead will confirm if the industry has the ability to convince the public at large that it is delivering value for money.
