European grants are failing to reach farmers (From Western Telegraph)

European grants are failing to reach farmers

Pembrokeshire farmers are not accessing important European grant funding because there arent enough people to administer the scheme, a farming crisis meeting concluded this week.

According to NFU leaders in Pembrokeshire, 4,000 farmers had applied for Farming Connect grants but only 15 grants had been issued. The delay is costing farmers like John Phillips dearly. He has invested £80,000 in a new milking parlour at Molleston Farm, Narberth. He turned to Objective One for financial support but was so frustrated by the length of time it took for his application to be processed that he gave up. It was a grant he desperately needed, he told Pembrokeshires two MPs on Friday. Since he built the parlour he has seen the price paid for his milk slide to 12.8p a litre, a return he describes as unsustainable. I am very disappointed that I was unable to get any Objective One funding, we met all the criteria of rejuvenating a business and creating employment, said Mr Phillips, chairman of the Pembrokeshire NFU Milk Committee. He attributes this failure to the lack of manpower behind the scheme.

He told Jackie Lawrence and Nick Ainger that never before had farmers in every sector experienced such a squeeze on their businesses. I am the fourth generation of my family to farm at Molleston Farm, I dont want to fail and let my family down, he said. I am just looking for a decent living but I am struggling to do that at the moment. Mr Phillips, who farms 400 acres with his wife and parents, urged the two MPs to help farmers like himself.

Jackie Lawrence and Nick Ainger met with representatives of the NFU at Colby Farm, Wiston, the home of the Pembrokeshire NFU chairman, Brian Ratcliffe. The meeting was called to discuss the crisis affecting every sector of the farming industry. There was bitter disappointment that the Government had not claimed European agrimonetary compensation, money which Mr Ratcliffe described as rightly ours. The MPs were told that milk co-operatives must be allowed to increase processing capacity without fear of being penalised for being anti-competitive.

Just release the barriers and let us get on and do our business so that we can compete with other countries rather than be restricted by competition laws, urged John Phillips.

Mansel Raymond, vice-chairman of the national NFU milk committee, agreed. I believe as an industry we have got to be in charge of our own destiny but there are many obstacles in our path to increasing the power of the co-operatives in charge of the milk we sell, he said. Unless there is a milk price increase there is going to be an exodus from the dairy industry that we have never seen the like of before. Primary producers have got to have a fair share in the profit, the UK has never been so far below the European target milk price.