A MINISTER has defended the government's support for farmers after complaints that Dorset would lose tens of millions of pounds from its rural economy.

As previously reported, research for the organisation Great South West found the current £38.3million paid to the county’s landowners under the Common Agricultural Policy’s Basic Payment Scheme will fall to £4.8m by 2027.

The scheme will then be axed altogether and payments under a new system are expected to be much lower.

But farming minister Victoria Prentis insisted the changes were right.

She said: “Our new schemes are supporting the choices that individuals take for their own farms, and helping to boost their productivity and profitability. We have recently almost trebled our new Farming Equipment and Technology Fund to over £48m to support more farmers with their investment plans.

“In 2017, £1.775billion of payments were made across 85,000 farms and 10 per cent of claimants received half of this total. Thirty-three per cent of farms received less than £5,000 each. This isn’t right and we are repurposing this money to pay farmers for the work that they do, rather than the amount of land they own. In the South West, more than 5,000 farmers are already in our environmental land management schemes.”