EU to cap farm payments - but supporting incomes remains top priority

He said: “We cannot fully exempt the existing programmes from cutbacks. What we have in mind is degressive funding. That means a very big business receives for its hectares a little bit less money than a small enterprise.”

A ceiling of €60,000, or £53,000, is significantly lower than the £100,000 initial cap Defra has proposed for UK farmers in its farming policy consultation.

Though the policy would be likely to garner public support, countries such as Czechoslovakia would be disproportionately affected because old large-scale communist co-operatives and state enterprises have been converted into big, private farms.

Despite the capping proposals, supporting farm incomes to protect food security is set out as the number one objective of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in the document.

This is in stark contrast to the UK Government’s post-Brexit farming plans, which have been heavily criticised for failing to consider food security.

Other future EU priorities include increasing competitiveness, improving farmers’ position in the value chain, contributing to climate change mitigation, preserving landscapes and attracting new entrants.

To bring new blood into the industry, the paper proposes giving member states the power to provide lump sum payments of up to €100,000 to farmers under 40 setting up new businesses.

Plans to task member states with targeting payments at ‘genuine farmers’ were also set out in the document.

People whose agricultural activity forms ‘an insignificant part of their overall economic activities or whose principal business activity is not agricultural’ would be denied support in future if the plans are approved.