Farmers' leaders expect the Government to announce £50 million of extra help for Britain's beleaguered farmers within days.

News of the package to help those facing ruin due to plummeting prices, the BSE crisis and the high value of sterling emerged after National Farmers' Union chiefs met Tony Blair and Agriculture Minister Nick Brown at Westminster last night.

Union president Ben Gill, who farms near Easingwold, said: "The Prime Minister said he was aware of the acute income loss and effects this was having on the industry and ministers are considering how to address this issue very urgently."

Mr Gill said: "We are selling our stock at way below what it costs to produce. Farmers are struggling to survive."

He told the Prime Minister the Retail price index had gone up 60 per cent and food price inflation by 40 per cent in the last 11 years, but farm gate prices had fallen by five per cent. A Ministry of Agriculture spokesman said: "Mr Brown is actively working on a package of aid for farmers, as he has said before.

"But there has been no formal announcement and no figures. Talk of figures is speculation at this stage."

Other Government sources indicated that the cash was likely to be found through the European Union's mechanism for compensating farmers for the high level of the pound against other currencies.

Half of any compensation would be paid by the Treasury and the remainder from European funds.

Meanwhile, Countryside Minister Elliot Morley has promised Yorkshire pig farmers he will look into the terms of an agreement reached last week by the Government and the British Retail Consortium. It had been thought that supermarket firms had agreed to buy British bacon, pork and ham, rather than imported pigmeat which is not produced to the same stringent welfare standards.

But only hours after the agreement was finalised, the consortium issued a statement claiming it applied only to fresh, own-brand pigmeat.

Angry pig farmers attending a conference near Beverley yesterday, at which Mr Morley was a speaker, accused the consortium of going back on its word.

The Minister agreed there was a need to clarify some issues and pledged to take up the matter.

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