MP leads debate in Parliament to urge Government to back Cumbrian farmers

This week, Cumbrian MP Tim Farron led a Westminster Hall debate in Parliament to warn that changes to farming support schemes are causing real hardship for farmers in the county.

Tim reported that upland livestock farmers have lost 41% of their income since 2019 and that lowland livestock farmers have lost 44%, according to figures from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

During the debate, Tim referenced a meeting he had with a group of farmers in Ormside near Appleby last week where one farmer told him the new Sustainable Farming Incentive would replace just 7 or 8% of funding of what he was losing from the old Basic Payment Scheme.

Tim said that the impact of this severe reduction in financial support was leading to many local farmers struggling to get by, with a huge toll being taken on their mental health.

Speaking during the debate, Tim said: “I can think of farmers who are essentially staring into the abyss. For example, people in their 60s who are tenants or else owners of a family farm. They are the fifth or sixth generation to run that farm. It is a beautiful place, but at times it is bleak, and it is always isolated. Life can be lonely.

“That farmer is working 90 hours a week, with no headspace to deal with the flip-flopping and chopping and changing of the new schemes. They see their basic payments disappearing, with nothing to fill its place. There they are, on the farm that their great-great-grandparents farmed before them, and all they can see is that they look increasingly like being the one who will lose the family farm. It will all end with them. Can we imagine what that does to someone, to their state of mind, and to their business and personal choices? What a burden we place on the farmers who feed us and care for our landscape and our environment, all because the Government will not face up to the reality that the transition is bleeding a torrent of cash from our farms, while injecting merely a trickle.

“I am proud of our farmers and of the work they do to feed us, care for our environment, tackle climate change and maintain our breathtaking landscapes. I plead with the Minister to take note and to urgently make changes to SFI and to the whole transition, so that we do not irreparably damage people, businesses and our land, just because we did not listen to our farmers.”