FOLLOWING a sustained campaign by the NFU and other countryside organisations, the EU Commission has been forced to back down on its plans to penalise farmers with big hedges or wide field margins.

At the eleventh hour, EU Farm Commissioner, Franz Fischler, has agreed the existing rules on measuring the size of fields will apply for this year.

Had the Commission's original proposals been enforced, farmers would have been faced with the dilemma of either slashing back their hedges and ploughing up field margins, or losing substantial sums in compensation.

NFU South West Regional Director, Anthony Gibson, hailed the decision as 'a victory for the countryside'.

'Either farmers or the landscape would have been the losers, had the commission not been persuaded of the error of its ways', said Mr Gibson.

'This measure would have cost farmers in this region collectively at least £2 million, and much of the good work which has been done in allowing hedges to grow out as wildlife havens and landscape features would have been wasted,' he said.

'The hedges of the South West are the hallmark of our countryside and the fact that this bureaucratic threat to their future has been lifted is excellent news from every point of view.'