By Darren Ennis
STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Europe's farm chief took aimat wealthy farmers on Tuesday, suggesting ways of graduallydocking their subsidies and channelling the saved cash intoschemes to enhance and preserve 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 the most controversial ideas in her "health check"is to trim handouts to large farms by siphoning off cash via atiered system of income brackets into rural developmentschemes.
"This health check is not a fundamental new reform, butit's simply a possibility to modernise, strengthen, simplifyand streamline our Common Agricultural Policy," Fischer Boelsaid.
"Crucially, it aims as well to remove remainingrestrictions on farmers, allowing them to respond to the marketand the growing demand for food that we see globally," she tolda news conference at the European Parliament in Strasbourg,France.
Her plan, in effect a mini-reform, would continue a policyshift away from more traditional support mechanisms, such assafety-net public purchase of commodity stocks at fixed prices,and farm subsidies 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.
France, by far the largest beneficiary of farm spending --a massive support programme that eats up more than 40 percentof the EU's entire budget -- is, so far, less than convinced.
"The European Commission is being unrealistic in itsproposals for the future of the CAP," French grain and oilseedgrowers' group Orama said in a statement.
"Grain markets have entered an era of high volatility sopublic storage and true security nets for farmers are more thanever necessary to keep an interest in producing even whenprices are low," it said, calling the proposals"incomprehensible".
LARGE FARMS
The suggestion of capping the income of Europe's largestfarms has annoyed several countries, such as Britain, Germanyand the Czech 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 in astatement he was "very critical" of that idea, which would loseGerman farmers more than 400 million euros of income.
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.
"It's not the time ... to micro-manage the possibilitiesfor farmers to produce and tell them exactly what to produce.Nor can we simply, as some have been suggesting ... simplyscrap the CAP," Fischer Boel said.
That was a clear reference to recent comments from Londoncalling for the CAP to be dismantled since it was responsiblefor costing consumers vastly more in higher food bills.
(Writing by Jeremy Smith; additional reporting by IlonaWissenbach in Brussels and Sybille de la Hamaide in Paris;editing by Christopher Johnson)
