Leaving the European Union would be a disaster for the UK’s farmers, Scotland’s farming minister has said.
Richard Lochhead accused the government of “gambling with the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers and food businesses”, and called the EU’s common agricultural policy a “protective shield” for farmers.
He told delegates at the Oxford farming conference: “The prime minister’s comments about the 2017 in/out referendum on Europe again raises the very real possibility off a UK exit from the EU, presenting a gigantic risk to the future of Scottish and UK farming and food production.”
He said that an exit would “leave producers at the mercy of the market – a market where our direct competitors continue to receive direct support. Our ability to produce food and our national interest would be jeopardised.
“It has set off alarm bells that [the government] is unable to explain how the loss of EU funding could be replaced,” Lochhead said.
The environment secretary, Elizabeth Truss, refused to say what an exit would mean for British farmers, saying only that the government wanted to stay in an EU single market.
She told the conference: “I want to keep the single market without having all the cumbersome costs of bureaucracy. We are negotiating very hard, but if we don’t get what we want then we are prepared to consider other options [such as an exit].”
The UK receives more than £3bn a year in subsidies under the common agricultural policy, and Europe is the UK’s biggest export market for food products. Many farmers are dependent on subsidies to break even. The food and farming industry is worth more than £100bn a year to the UK and employs one in eight of those in jobs.
The Ukip MEP Stuart Agnew said the UK’s farming industry could survive outside the EU, and farmers would benefit from less regulation, including on pesticide use.
George Eustice, the Conservative farming minister, refused to be drawn on what an exit could mean for farming, and instead used the conference to warn farmers against using their land for solar panels.
In the latest in a line of interventions against renewable energy made by senior Tories, he said: “The idea that you can continue to farm underneath solar panels is pie in the sky.” He said farms that did so could become ineligible for some agricultural subsidies.