THE majority of Danish farmers want the generous farm production subsidies from the European Union scrapped.
Danish farmers will in 2009 receive 7.4 billion krone or roughly $1.6 billion Australian dollars.
Instead, most would like to see some incentives to help pay for changes needed to comply with the onerous EU environmental regulations or to develop new emission abatement or renewable energy projects, particularly to turn farm waste into fuel.
Some farmers believe the current dire financial circumstances facing their sector in Denmark has been exacerbated by the long-running production subsidies, which have forced up costs and land values, and made it harder to compete on the export market.
Danish Food and Agriculture chairman, Michael Brockenhuus-Schack, said the issue of subsidies is often brought up at an EU level, and is seen differently by farmers depending on where they live.
"If you look at the farming sector in France, it is quite focussed on their domestic market, but our farming is very export-focussed," Mr Brockenhuus-Schack said.
"We are huge exporters and active in the global market and that of course provides some different opinions on how to deal with subsidies.
"Our opinion is that if you could make international agreements where you, over a sufficient period of time, it is possible for the entire sector to adapt to it, we support a gradual reduction of the subsidies."
Mr Brockenhuus-Schack said in the transition to a preferred phasing out altogether of traditional subsidies related to production, Danish farmers would like to see subsidies moved over to pay for the issues related to nature and environment, for example to help with the "major, major challenges" the sector faces relating to new EU water quality rules.
He said another fear for Danish farmers was an increasing focus in competitor EU countries on national production subsidies.
"As a big exporter, with a very liberal minister, we are not at all pleased that the agricultural policy is being re-nationalised," he said.
"We are telling the government to provide the best possible national set up for us to compete – they should look at our cost structure and address the inefficiencies in the public service and controls, and help us compete in the global market."
The Danish Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, Eva Kjer Hansen, said her Government provides no subsidies to farmers and farm payments were only from the EU.
She said despite the perception in other parts of the world about the advantage these payments gave to EU farmers over producers elsewhere, it was the case in Denmark that most farmers would prefer to see the abolished.
"The political point of view among politicians and also farm sector is that we should abolish subsidies or support, particularly at the EU level," she said.
"The mood is that we should reform the EU common agricultural policy which would at least reduce the subsidies.
"This is because the Danish experience is we have high costs in Denmark, but we produce quality products and we can sell them world wide.
"We believe that we can be competitive in a global context without subsidies."
However, Mrs Kjer Hansen said there was a fear in Denmark that, to the contrary, the current economic crisis would instead trigger a flood of State-based support, which she believes would be a big problem for the Danish economy.
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