THE rural environment could be damaged and public confidence in farming undermined if proposed changes in European subsidy rules went ahead, a North Yorkshire conference heard.

Mark Hudson, national deputy president of the Country Land & Business Association (CLA), voiced concern about European Commission proposals to link subsidies to individuals rather than land, when he spoke to chartered surveyors at the RICS northern conference in Harrogate.

He said Common Agricultural Policy reforms could result in land subsidies being traded by farmers.

"If the general public see entitlements to payment being sold or swapped without the land on which they were originally based, they may see it as open to abuse and find it difficult to support continued public funding for agriculture," he said.

Proposals to "decouple" subsidies from production had been actively promoted by the CLA, but new payments must be "recoupled" to environmentally-friendly agriculture, he said.

"Existing proposals mean that entitlements to payment could move with the farmer to other land, which had none, leaving some land with no environmental obligations.

"The CLA believes that the new entitlements should be fixed to the land which gave rise to them and paid annually to the occupier of that land.

"Conditions for entitlements are to be land-related, so surely it follows that payments should be fixed to a land parcel."

Updated: 09:46 Friday, May 16, 2003