LONDON, U.K. (Reuters) — After decades of generous subsidies from Brussels, some British farmers are starting to think the unthinkable, that they might be better off outside the European Union.
Farmers were strong supporters of EU membership when Britons last voted on it in 1975, and for years they flourished as funds flowed into the sector to encourage ever-rising production.
The US$4.4 billion a year that they receive in support payments from the EU makes up 55 percent of total income from farming, according to government figures.
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But now, with prime minister David Cameron preparing to call an “in or out” referendum on Britain’s EU membership, possibly as early as June, some farmers feel the benefits of belonging to the EU are far less compelling than a generation ago.
They wonder if leaving the EU might free them to innovate in areas such as genetically modified crops and rid them of oppressive regulation.
“We are being hammered as a source of employment for inspectors,” said Charlie Flindt, a farmer from Hampshire in southern England.
Even simple jobs, such as putting up a fence to protect walkers who had complained of being mobbed by his cattle, involved painful bureaucracy, he added.
“You can’t simply put in a fence any more, and the hoops we have to jump through to get our European Union subsidies just pile up year after year,” he said.
“And most of us went into this job to get away from paperwork.”
Flindt, who has a farm in Hampshire along with a few sheep and cattle, said he couldn’t believe a British-based system, outside the EU, would be “as Kafkaesque as it is at the moment.”
Full-time farmers are relatively few in number — only 140,000 in 2014, according to government figures — but they wield considerable influence in rural communities which, come election time, vote overwhelmingly for Cameron’s governing Conservatives.
Not all are swayed by the argument that leaving the EU would make life easier. Some worry subsidies could be cut and they might lose access to important European markets.
France was the largest beneficiary of EU farm payments in 2014 with $9.3 billion. Britain was in sixth place after Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland.
“In the past, all the main political parties have said they want to phase out subsidies by 2020,” said National Farmers Union economist Lucia Zitti.
“I think it is more likely if a system of subsidy is going to be maintained, it will be less than we get now with the CAP.”
She said the union’s members are “quite split. They want to understand more about the implications of a possible Brexit and also hear how the EU can work better for farmers.”
Matt Naylor, who grows flowers such as daffodils to sell to supermarkets in Britain and mainland Europe, said he would vote in favour of staying in the EU because he relies heavily on foreign labour.
Naylor said workers from countries such as Poland, Lithuania and Latvia had often grown up on farms and had a different work ethic and set of expectations from their British counterparts, who were often three or four generations removed from the land.
The in-or-out debate featured prominently recently at the annual Oxford Farming Conference, where former farming and environment minister Owen Paterson argued that the EU was shackling British innovation.
“British agriculture, brimming with potential, is held back by prejudice against advanced technology and science,” he said.
“The obstinate refusal to adopt advanced technology means Europe has become the museum of world farming.”
