Brexit Exposes
Large Scale Corruption By EU Farmers
The UK Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has
revealed that it is investigating nearly five
hundred UK farms. All the investigations relate
to the illegal claiming of EU farm subsidies.
Although specific farms
cannot be named for legal reasons, the DEFRA
reviews have identified a very widespread
practice among British farmers of claiming
subsidies in respect of non-existent livestock
and crops.
‘This issue was
initially identified in the UK,’ confirmed
José Silva Rodríguez, head of the EU
Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural
Development – the body responsible for EU
farming subsidies. ‘DEFRA uncovered the
fraud because the UK has recently been reviewing
each subsidy claim with a view to planning post-Brexit
financial compensation. The problem, however,
clearly exists throughout the EU.
‘EU subsidies under
the Common Agricultural Policy are obviously
payable to farms anywhere within the EU,’
explained Señor Rodríguez to an emergency press
conference. ‘There are over twelve million
such farms, however. My team of four assessors in
Brussels is therefore unable to individually
scrutinise every claim – much less visit so
many locations. We have thus relied very heavily
upon technology.’
Señor Rodríguez went on
to explain that the European Union’s Sentinel-2A
satellite and the US Geological Survey/NASA
Landsat satellites provided his department with
high resolution ground images. Since 2014,
artificial intelligence software had been used to
analyse satellite photographs of the farms
claiming subsidies.
‘This approach has
proven to be extremely effective in assessing the
crops being grown and the numbers and types of
livestock being kept,’ concluded Señor
Rodríguez, ‘although it’s now clear
that the system has been highly vulnerable to
abuse.’
A farmer from Kent, England
is believed to have been the first person to
exploit this EU assessment process to make a
fraudulent subsidy claim, and the Short
Humour Site has obtained an exclusive
interview with him on the condition of protecting
his anonymity.
‘My granddad gave me
the idea,’ the farmer admitted to our
reporter. ‘When I was a kid, he told me how,
during the Second World War, they’d used
decoy tanks, aircraft and other fake structures
to fool German aerial reconnaissance. The models
were made of painted wood and canvas, and they
tricked the Nazis into believing that there were
concentrations of allied forces in areas where
there were none. Granddad was involved in
building the ones that helped Monty in North
Africa, and similar mock-ups were critical to the
success of D Day in 1944 as they led Hitler to
believe that the allied invasion of Europe would
be launched via Dover.
‘Fleeces cost more to
shear than we get from selling them,’ the
farmer continued, ‘and so there was no great
loss in keeping them to make decoys. Initially,
we constructed about ninety simple wooden frames
and covered each with a fleece. From the air,
anyone would have mistaken them for genuine sheep.
Of course we moved the decoys around at night,’
he added. ‘We thought the bureaucrats in
Brussels might get suspicious if each animal had
remained in exactly the same place on every
photograph.’
From these small beginnings,
this lucrative subterfuge appears to have quickly
spread across the UK and then throughout Europe
– with hundreds of thousands of decoy sheep,
cows and pigs beings erected in fields in view of
the orbiting satellites.
‘The deception appears
to have not just been confined to livestock,’
admitted Michael Gove MP, UK Secretary of State
for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. ‘The
current DEFRA reviews are being undertaken by
unannounced farm visits. This has led to the
identification of many fields filled with thin,
wooden sticks that have been poked into the
ground and then sprayed green or yellow in order
to look, on sattelite photographs, like crops.’
Mr Gove also revealed how
some farmers who received EU ecological subsidies
had placed fake nests in trees – nests that
contained cut-out, wooden birds of prey. The
practice of painting concreted farmyard areas
blue and then claiming subsidies for the
development of wildlife ponds was also said to be
widespread.
‘Even without the
information from DEFRA,’ noted José Silva
Rodríguez, ‘my department would have
uncovered the fraud very soon. During the past
two years, the demand for decoys has clearly
outstripped the numbers that could be
manufactured on individual farms. Underground
commercial suppliers have thus emerged. It would
have been impossible to keep this industry hidden
from my staff indefinitely – even if a self-assembly,
flat-pack cow had not become available from the
Brussels branch of Ikea.’
‘I’m sorry that
the scam’s been rumbled,’ admitted the
Kent farmer who originally conceived the idea.
‘Decoy technology has developed rapidly
since I made that first wooden frame and hung a
fleece over it. These days you can get motorised
decoys that will change their own positions
– either by remote control or on a timer.
Some even have mowers incorporated. I’ve
even seen one decoy sheep that can be programmed
to go “baa” in a variety of voices.’
Despite the recent
revelations, the UK government does not appear to
be particularly concerned. ‘I expect
Brussels will whinge about the subsidies that
have been fraudulently claimed by British farmers,’
Mr Gove concluded, ‘but then those bloody
foreigners are always whingeing about something,
and, after Brexit, we won’t have to pretend
any more that we give a damn.’
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