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Farmers get insufficient time to apply for grant

Q to the First Minister for Wales, Rhodri Morgan AM

Dear Mr Morgan: My inquiry concerns the administration of agricultural policy. Perhaps you can tell me why it's necessary to set the closing date of the latest farm support scheme with such a very tight timescale. Tir Goval pays farmers to improve and invest in various approved projects on their land. It's public money, quite a lot of it and much from the EU, which is delivered to farmers and land owners who meet the requirements. The first of these being to obtain, complete and return the application form.

The timetable of which I'm critical is as follows:
1. Welsh Farm Minister Carwyn Jones announced the new scheme to the media in an e-mail: Friday Oct 27 No opportunity for media to get further information over Sat and Sunday. The duty officer's phones were not working. So earliest the media can publicise the scheme is Monday 30.
2. Applications packs will be sent (1st class) to farmers who request them: Tues Nov 7 - five working days after the scheme is announced.
3. Closing date for applications: Mon Nov 20. Applications which are hand delivered will not be eligible. Only those posted will be considered. This allows one working week (ie posted out on Tues 7th, allow for rural post delays so receive on Thurs 9th, filled in by Thurs 16th for posting to get to Cardiff on Saturday) for the applications to be completed properly, the relevant maps found and copied.
In practice this means that only those farmers who are really on the ball regarding grants will get on the scheme which will make them £thousands better off.
I believe this policy favours farmers who are not necessarily the most deserving. The money will be awarded to larger farm businesses with more office time. Farmers who are in the know, with good contacts with the unions. Farmers who know people in the Welsh Assembly Government. Farmers who can get help to complete the form - there are only a handful of people in Wales in the farming unions who know their way around these forms.

Carwyn Jones tells the media that 300,000 ha, and 3,000 farmers have been improved under the Tir Goval scheme so far. This is an average of 100 ha per farmer, or 240 acres, far greater than the size of the average Welsh farm. 3,000 farmers sound a considerable number, but is a small percentage of the total.

I trust there is no connection between the haste to gain applications and the characteristics of the farmers who benefit. I am sure the First Minister would disapprove of the creation of any kind of 'club' of beneficiaries of this and other public finance. A 'club' where those in the know, who have good connections with say, Farming Connect, get to hear of the schemes and get help, if needed, in getting their applications in, while those not so well connected miss out.

Yours sincerely, Mike Donovan, editor, Practical Farm Ideas