MR
REG HAYDON
AND MR
GEORGE DUNN
Chairman
115. Mr Haydon, Mr Dunn, welcome to this evidence
session of the Agriculture Committee inquiry into the rural development
aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy reform. It will be very
helpful, although I know many of the Committee know you personally,
if you could just formally introduce yourselves for the record,
Mr Haydon.
(Mr Haydon) Thank you, Mr Chairman. First
of all, thank you very much for inviting us, the TFA, to come
before your Committee, which we look forward to. I am Reg Haydon.
I am the National Chairman of the Tenant Farmers Association.
I am also a tenant farmer running two businesses, one in the lowlands
in England near Arundel, a tenant farm covering 500 areas of mixed
arable/dairy farm. I also run a hill farm in the Brecon Beacons
National Park which is also tenanted, so I have a wide spread
of enterprises. On my right I have George Dunn, who is our Chief
Executive, and we will endeavour to answer your questions.
116. Thank you very much. After the kind and
gracious things you said about me last week at the Royal Show,
I shall instruct the Committee to be very generous to you. Mr
Haydon, thank you for your written evidence, which the Committee
appreciates. Perhaps we could start with some very factual nitty-gritty
stuff, just to get the Committee going. To start with, some very
basic facts about the tenant farm sector. How many tenant farms
do you estimate there are in the United Kingdom?
(Mr Haydon) It is very difficult to say. An estimate,
a figure from the Ministry is around 16,000 in England. There
are approximately 1,900 in Wales, where owner/occupancy is more
to the fore, especially small family farms. In Scotland, we think
there are about 5,500. These figures need to be taken with caution
because there are many owner/occupiers who rent a proportion of
land as well and who keep quiet about it. There are also many
other systems operating within the system, partnerships within
families, where one of the members of the family may own the farm
and rent it to other members of the family and in a partnership,
for taxation and other reasons. There are quite a lot of those
and it is very difficult to define what they are. That would give
you some rough idea.
117. Those figures of 23,000 tenant farmers,
you would recognise as tenant farmers in the true sense of the
word, largely?
(Mr Haydon) Yes, I would think it is about that.
118. Have you any idea what the average farm
size would be of those holdings?
(Mr Haydon) It is very difficult to say. George?
(Mr Dunn) The Ministry figure would indicate that
the average farm is somewhere round about the same as owner/occupation,
around 120 or 150 hectares.
119. The same sort of average size?
(Mr Dunn) Yes.
