Electronic Identification of Sheep & Cost Sharing

Shadow farm minister, Jim Paice, has claimed that English hill farmers will be worse off by £1,000 under new government regulations. The additional costs for a typical hill farm with 600 sheep are made up of an annual cost-sharing payment of £247 and an annual electronic identification (EID) charge of £762.

The grazing of our uplands by sheep is an essential part of management in most areas. Certainly, there has been bad practice in the past and the effects of overgrazing are evident in many areas, but without sheep our uplands would look very different.

Are we risking the financial viability and future of our hill farms by introducing these extra charges to say nothing about the extra bureaucracy involved? Stock numbers are already falling, and aside from food production issues, we need viable hill farms as the only means of providing management input in many areas. I argue that leaving such areas as unmanaged wildernesses is never going to produce a happy outcome. We must support and encourage our hill farmers not burden them with additional costs and red tape.

Additional information is available from Farmer's Weekly Interactive and the National Sheep Association is strongly against EID. The DEFRA website has a useful summary of the Cost Sharing Proposals (the consultation runs until 30 Jun 09).