This is why I believe leaving the EU would both benefit UK farmers and developing countries.

At first glance of the EU budget, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) may come across as a generous haven for farmers with it taking up 40 per cent of the EU budget. We’ve been told a vote to leave the European Union will stop UK farmers receiving support through funding but this agricultural subsidy policy is not all it makes out to be for our hard-working farmers.

For every £1 British agriculture receives from the CAP, the British taxpayer has contributed £2. This pretty much pokes a whole in the 'Remain camp’s' logic that they will lose funding.

We see the same problem with other 'EU funding', such as their Solidarity Fund. We put more in that we get out and it’s really important to point out this is not 'EU money', this is taxpayers' money. It is capital which we should be able to keep here instead of booting to Brussels to use it carelessly at a disadvantage certainly to the UK taxpayer.

In a post-EU Britain we will be able to distribute payments away from wealthy landowners and large farmed holdings to funnel funding in favour of smaller food producers and family farms. Surely this control is what we need to benefit our agricultural industry.

We should also point out that being part of this naively produced EU policy is a massive disadvantage to other developing countries, such as Africa for example, which are highly dependent on agriculture.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN found that agriculture provides for the livelihoods of 70 per cent of the world’s poorest people, and what the CAP is doing is creating a heavily subsidised market and creating an unfair amount of competition. The policy massively hinders developing countries from exporting to the EU (including us as EU members) on a level playing field.

A vote to leave the EU would not only be a wise and confident move away from a narrow-minded EU agricultural policy to benefit UK farmers and the British taxpayer, but it will be a humanitarian move to benefit poorer countries and to aid their development.

I have relatives who have farmed all their lives in the South Lakes, UK and they want to see the same as me. It is a positive move for a brighter post-EU Britain and a much more positive world. Let’s take back control and believe in our farmers.

Aron Taylor

Kendal

UKIP SLDC candidate for Sedbergh & Kirkby Lonsdale