Tamus theres another one you can get on to, since your on about benefits the single farm payment its a benefit is it not .
Lets get all the witch hunts over in the one go .
Sorry, I literally just caught this thread, or I'd have responded sooner.
I'll pm you my business name if you like and you can check the government website yourself.
The fact is we take NO Single Farm Payment, or any other subsidy. I refused them on the terms of the deal alone.
Food production needs to be subsidised to keep it cheap in this country and yet the SFP is a decoupling of subsidy from production,
my first gripe.
SFP is supposedly compensation for compliance with food production regulations,
my second gripe (who else gets paid just to obey the law?)
SFP is also supposedly paid to aid compliance with animal welfare regulations,
my third gripe (as gripe two, why should anyone need paid to obey fatuous laws?)
And to
my final gripe... the first three had my neighbours think me odd, btw... The deal is open ended, farmers sign up to rules which they MUST obey to gain the payments, on pain of serious penalty for any, even minor, default... but those rules which bind them are able to be "renegotiated" at will by our government... that's not a good deal on anyone's terms and my neighbours now hate how they are hamstrung by the agreements they made which is constantly changing and leaving them worse and worse off... Not so odd now, I can run my land as I please, within the law and do not fear any knock at the door and spot inspection which might reveal three sheep have lost their eartags and so I must lose 25% of that year's margin to live on. Who can live with that sort of threat... every SFP claimant has to. The truth is we manage just fine "outside" of SFP though I have to admit it is a challenge, but not impossible.
Incidentally my benefit claiming neighbour claims every penny of his SFP entitlement, but I guess you'd expect that, on his 7 acres "
Farm".
I bet you didn't expect that answer.