THE Government has moved to prevent the country’s biggest landowners gaining cash windfalls under a new payment system after reform of the Common Agriculture Policy.

Beef and dairy farmers who run intensive farm businesses will also lose out from the change as ministers order a radical redistribution of the £1.7 billion a year paid to English farmers in state handouts.

Under the scheme to be phased in over eight years a new flat-rate payment is to be made to farmers based on the amount of land they farm. By 2012 this is likely to be worth some £220 per hectare (£89 per acre.) But a cap has been imposed in upland areas such as the Yorkshire Moors, the Lake District, the Peak District, Dartmoor and Exmoor.

Institutional landlords such as the Prince of Wales’s Duchy of Cornwall, the Dukes of Westminster and Devonshire, the National Trust and many other owners of large estates, shoots and grouse moors, land categorised as severely disadvantaged areas, will be paid a lower rate.

This is likely to be £70 to £90 per hectare (£28 to £36 per acre) in 2012. A number of Labour MPs last night welcomed the reforms but were concerned that wealthy landowners would still be propped up by massive cash handouts for largely unproductive land.

The new system breaks the system of state handouts to farmers for food production and instead they will be rewarded for greener farming practices. To be eligible for cash, farmers must keep their land in good agricultural or environmental condition.

The terms are likely to include strict animal welfare standards, maintenance of hedgerows and wildlife habitats, and opening up rights of way and public footpaths.

Beef and dairy farmers were particularly shocked that they appear to have been chosen to carry the brunt of cuts. Their enterprises do not require large areas of land as cattle are generally kept in sheds. From next year to 2012 their annual payments could be halved.

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