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Farming Today: Welsh Hill Farmers, Royal Mail, Sugar

21/11/2014

Welsh Hill Farmers, Royal Mail, Sugar

BBC Radio 4 - Farming Today, Welsh Hill Farmers, Royal Mail, Sugar

Charlotte Smith with news that 100 hill farmers plan to take the Welsh government to court

One hundred upland farmers plan to take the Welsh government to court over changes in the basic subsidy payments for moorland areas. They says it is unfair. With Charlotte Smith.

A hundred upland farmers are planning to take the Welsh government to court over changes in the basic subsidy payments for moorland areas. The 'moorland line' has been drawn at 400 metres : farmers with land below the line will receive 200 euros per hectare, those with land above it will receive just 20 euros per hectare. The farmers - calling themselves Fairness for the Uplands - say the line is arbitrary, and will make many farms unviable. The Welsh Government says it can't comment on an ongoing legal case. 

There are increasing fears that postal services in rural areas could suffer, as increased competition makes the Royal Mail more vulnerable. The higher cost of deliveries to remote areas is currently subsidised by more profitable deliveries in urban areas. But those lucrative deliveries are being 'cherry-picked' by private firms. The Royal Mail is still under obligation to deliver - at the same price - to all 29 million addresses in the UK, six days a week. But the BBCs business editor Kamal Ahmed tells Charlotte Smith that obligation is coming under increasing pressure.

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