THE National Beef Association has asked Defra to use the imminent re-modelling of hill farm allowance (HFA) payments in England to introduce a new, cattle-based incentive which encourages suckled calf breeders to maintain existing cow numbers.

"This would also act as an inducement to extend the presence of grazing cattle in areas where their landscape and environment protection capabilities would be most useful," said National Beef Association chairman, Robert Robinson.

"In our reply to Defra's consultation paper we said this new payment would be of most benefit if it was installed ahead of the CAP reforms in 2005 and included all beef cattle as well as suckler cows."

The NBA would like Defra to boost the HFA budget by introducing match funded modulation money, injected through the environmental incentives put forward by the Curry Report.

"If Curry's broad and shallow scheme could be integrated into the English HFA system, it would provide the cash base that could be used to encourage good hill grass management through either mixed sheep and cattle or cattle-only grazing," said Mr Robinson.

"And if more cattle of the right type appeared on more hill farms, they could be used to reconstruct the stratified system of breeding specialist beef heifers that almost completely disappeared at the end of the Sixties.

"This would help the beef sector minimise the damage to cow conformation and carcase quality caused by increasingly extreme Holstein breeding in the dairy herd and, at the same time, assist landscape and habitat protection by placing more cattle on the higher land."

The NBA expects maximum stocking criteria for hill farms receiving SCP and SAP to continue over 2004 but these could disappear in 2005 with the adoption of full decoupling.

"The association has asked Defra to find a way of using current stocking rates as a basis for HFA payment in 2005 and immediately beyond until it has a much clearer idea of the impact of the single farm payment on cattle population levels in the uplands and hills," said Mr Robinson.

" We say this because we firmly believe that existing schemes like the HFA should be used to direct new funds towards the most suitable recipients - including those on farms where the adoption of the new CAP regulations could result in stock depopulation and land dereliction.

"It is possible that similar ideas could form the basis of HFA payment revision in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, too."