Your article (‘We’re only seeing the negative’: UK farmers on Brexit and losing the common agricultural policy, 29 December) fails to point out that the common agricultural policy (CAP) payments received by Dyson Farming are dwarfed by the investment that my family and I have ploughed into British agriculture. I have never supported the basis of CAP and view Brexit as an opportunity for Britain to replace those ill-conceived subsidies, devised in Brussels, with a regime which supports Britain’s priorities. Food security – like energy security – is vital to any country’s interests.
My family and I are farmers, not landowners. We have invested £120m, in addition to the cost of land, bringing long-term capital, technology and employment into British farming. Dyson Farming produced 70,000 tonnes of cereals and 16,000 tonnes of potatoes in 2022, plus out-of-season strawberries which avoid the food miles associated with imported alternatives. Our anaerobic digesters generate electricity for 10,000 homes, and the farms sequester more carbon than they emit.
British farmers need to be able to compete on a level playing field with those in Europe and further afield. Brexit provides the freedom to devise a subsidy regime which replaces the EU’s flawed CAP payments, and the government must now grasp that opportunity.
Sir James Dyson
Malmesbury, Wiltshire
