THE biggest shake-up in farming support for 30 years announced by Rural Affairs Secretary Margaret Beckett last week has received a mixed reaction from West Devon farmers.

Speaking in the Commons last Thursday Mrs Beckett announced that under the CAP reforms, subsidies linked to food production would be scrapped and a new system of area-based payments introduced.

Under the new system, all farmers would be paid a standard rate per acre, provided rules governing animal welfare, environmental protection and land access were met.

The new payment processes will start next year, when England's £1.7-billion total subsidy 'pot' will be divided up differently. The changes will be phased in over eight years — present subsidies will be reduced year by year, while the new payments are phased in.

The aim is to

introduce a system which is ultimately more simple and less bureaucratic, encouraging farmers to produce goods for which there is a profitable market.

Mrs Beckett said there would be 'winners and losers' under the new system, but that the Government would be happy to 'examine the redistributive effects and see what can be done to mitigate them'.

'In the long term, a simple system such as we propose will be to everyone's advantage,' she said.

But Dartmoor farmer Layland Branfield disagreed — he had been hoping for an 'historic payment' based on 2001/2002 subsidies.

'I would be lying if I said I was over the moon about it,' he said. 'For Devon I wouldn't have thought it was the best outcome, and certainly not for Dartmoor.'

Mr Branfield said the new system would be particularly hard for Dartmoor farmers who over generations had intensively farmed small packets of land in order to make a living.

'If we lose those salt of the earth people we lose the fabric of the moor and of community support — the socio-economic structure of the moor is going to alter drastically over the next ten years,' said Mr Branfield, who added he stands to lose under the new system.

He said on the face of it, the new payment methods sounded fair, but predicted less stock would be kept on Dartmoor and warned of knock-on environmental effects and on the local economy in general.

Bere Ferrers farmer and last year's Devon NFU chairman John Dawe said that generally he thought the new system of payments would be 'fairly good' — but he too was pessimistic for the outlook of farming in the Dartmoor area.

Barbara Anning, Tavistock NFU chairman who farms in Mary Tavy, said there would be winners and losers under the new system, but hoped bureacracy would be cut in future.

She was generally optimistic for the future of farming and pleased to get away from the system of subsidies, but could see pitfalls as well as advantages in the future.

Paul Griffiths, chairman of Okehampton and Hatherleigh NFU, a dairy and beef farmer from Northlew, said the new system 'could have been worse'.

'At least it's going to give people time to adjust their businesses, but we are still waiting for the small print — the devil's in the detail,' he said.

West Devon and Torridge MP John Burnett said the new system, once the transition period had finished, would be 'hugely less bureaucratic'.

'There will be one form, one payment, on one day,' he said. 'One of the main causes of complaint I get from farmers is the petty bureacracy they face at the moment.'

Mr Burnett said he and fellow MPs would work hard to ensure that West Country farmers and particularly tenant farmers were not disadvantaged as a result of the new system.