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Thousands of Danish farms lose EU funding
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January 27th, 2014
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New EU rules will pull support from small farms starting next year
About 8,000 of the country's smallest farms will be forced to exist without EU subsidies starting next year, according to a government plan that lays out how EU support will be divvied up.
The raising of the amount of land a small farm must claim to qualify for support from two to five acres will cost 8,000 of the 44,000 farms that received subsidies last year their EU support.
Lone Andersen from the agricultural organisation Landbrug og Fødevarer said that decision is the exact opposite of what Denmark needs.
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“It is totally wrongheaded at a time when it is already hard to generate growth in rural areas,” Andersen told DR Nyheder. “Although many are small hobby-type farms, they are nevertheless of great importance to food production and rural life.”
The 8,000 small farmers that stand to lose their subsidies account for 74 million kroner of the seven billion kroner subsidy that the EU paid to Danish agriculture last year.
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