SHEEP and goat farmers must not be swayed by empty promises from deputies that they will continue getting a state subsidy, which was halved this year and is due to expire under EU rules, agriculture minister Sophoclis Aletraris said yesterday.
Aletraris was in Parliament where main opposition DISY deputies tabled a discussion on the issue, following a series of protests by the sheep and goat farmers.
The cabinet decided in August to halve a state subsidy to the farmers offering them €5.2 million to be distributed among them depending on livestock numbers.
“We didn’t cut our own wages in half, how can we so thoughtlessly do this to the farmers?” said DISY MP Kyriacos Hadjiyiannis.
The average yearly income loss comes to €1,763 per farmer based on data given by the assistant commissioner of the Cyprus Agricultural Payments Organisation (KOAP), Christos Mavrokordatos.
When Cyprus entered the EU in 2004, it had secured approval to offer state funding to farmers, but this expires this year, Aletraris said. “I’ve heard deputies promise the funding will continue. This is the last year so I say this to farmers; do not accept empty promises,” he said.
The funding was given as support for the anticipated rise in animal feed prices post EU accession, and was designed to gradually decrease over the years, Mavrokordatos said.
Mavrokordatos added that 2,950 applications were filed for 2012 payments from farmers who collectively had about 435,000 animals. They expected at least €10.4 million between them – if not more - but got half of that which comes to €11.50 per animal.
Some bigger farmers were due to get a bigger slice of the pie and were expecting even €30,000, said the head of the Paphos sheep and goat farmers’ association, Evagoras Chrysanthou.
Chrysanthou said that Paphos’ farmers were planning to let their animals loose in the district on Monday. He threatened this in August as well and retracted, after Aletraris asked the farmers to continue discussion.
Other farmers asked to get the rest of their subsidy from the government bailout, if and when it comes.
Aletraris said the state could not afford to pay any more but enlisted support measures.
These include meeting with the electricity authority and the water board to negotiate better billing schemes, and securing a guaranteed proportion of goat and sheep milk in halloumi cheese. And Aletraris said that animal feed prices had dropped somewhat.
A farmers’ delegation also met yesterday with ruling party AKEL’s general secretary Andros Kyprianou who supported Aletraris.
Opposition parties EDEK and DIKO asked the government to eventually pay the remaining subsidy in separate statements yesterday.