By Darren Ennis
STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Europe's farm chief took aimat wealthy farmers on Tuesday, suggesting ways of graduallydocking their subsidies and using the money to fund schemes toenhance the countryside.
In a blueprint for revamping farm policy up to 2013, EUAgriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel wants to abolish-- or at least curtail -- a string of "old-style" farm supportschemes, helping farmers respond to growing demand for food.
One of her plan's most controversial ideas is to reducehandouts to larger farms by siphoning off the cash, via atiered system of income thresholds, into rural developmentprojects.
"These proposals are right for the times that we live in.They steer a path between the dangers of inefficientmicro-management on the one side and irresponsible no-rulesliberalism on the other," Fischer Boel said.
"They will move us further along the road of competitiveand sustainable farming that can respond to demand and be partof the solution to the broader challenges that the worldfaces," she told the agriculture committee of the EuropeanParliament.
The so-called "health check" would continue a shift awayfrom more traditional support mechanisms, such as safety-netpublic purchase of commodity stocks at fixed prices, and farmsubsidies that are still linked to production volumes.
Fischer Boel's plan will now be discussed by EU farmministers, with a view to reaching a deal in November. It iscertain to be a rough ride: EU governments already have several"shopping lists" of changes they want in specific policy areas.
The suggestion of capping the income of Europe's largestfarms has annoyed countries, such as Britain, Germany and theCzech Republic -- all with big land holders.
Farms receiving subsidies of more than 300,000 euros(237,300 pounds) a year, for example, would see 22 percent ofthat siphoned into countryside-enhancing schemes by 2012.
German Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said he was"very critical" of that idea, which he estimated would makeGerman farmers lose more than 400 million euros of income.
"The Common Agricultural Policy is healthy. It needs onlysome medicine drops to be strengthened," he said in astatement.
Other proposals include the abolition of set-aside, whichis the requirement for farmers to leave 10 percent of landfallow each year to give soil a chance to recover betweencrops, and also the special subsidy of 45 euros per hectare nowgiven to farmers to grow crops for biofuels.
There will also be small annual increases in milkproduction quotas in a gradual market liberalisation aiming tocushion the financial pain for the EU's dairy industry ahead ofthe planned abolition of the quota system in 2015.
(Writing by Jeremy Smith; additional reporting by IlonaWissenbach; editing by Ben Tan)
