NEW figures indicating farm incomes are now less than £50 a week graphically illustrate the industrys worse fears, the Farmers Union of Wales revealed.

FUW president Bob Parry said he was distressed, but not surprised, that a survey just published by chartered accountants Deloitte and Touche revealed the UK average profit for a 500-acre family farm had plummeted from £8,000 last year to £2,500 today.

Only a fortnight before the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in February I stated I was appalled at official Assembly figures showing the average income for Welsh farms was just £4,700 last year, Mr Parry recalled.

So you can imagine how I, and all other Welsh farmers, feel after hearing the outcome of this latest survey. It indicates the national average profit is a mere £5 per acre and I strongly believe it is even lower than that in Wales alone.

How on earth can anyone cope on an annual wage of £2,500? Nobody would apply for a job that paid so little. In fact, it is much, much lower than the statutory minimum wage.

But Mr Parry was even more anxious to learn from the survey that although farmers overheads had fallen by 10% nationwide since 1996, it had not been enough to combat the 30% fall in farmgate prices over the same period.

This proves farmers are continuing to lose income to the middlemen as the purchasing powers of supermarket chains continually get stronger. Prices in the shops, for all kinds of processed foods down to the common chip, is often up to ten times more than the farmgate price.

The FUW has consistently pointed out this disturbing trend to the Government but they are reluctant to curb the supermarkets. The public is spending the same amount on food but less and less is being paid to the farmer who produces it.

Middlemen are creaming off more and more of the profits and unless this trend is reversed the countryside will suffer a far greater recession than that which has already struck following the foot and mouth crisis, said Mr Parry.

But Mark Hill, head of Deloitte and Touches Food and Agriculture Department, believes opportunities exist to recapture value from supermarkets by selling locally and avoiding food miles.

For example, he said it was absolute nonsense to send animals to the other side of the country for slaughter. But Britain only has 350 abattoirs and rendering plants compared to Austria, bound by the same regulations, which has 7,000.

The FUW has campaigned vigorously to retain these smaller abattoirs despite EU demands for their closure. Crucial issues of this sort must be urgently addressed by the UK Government to ensure Welsh farming can embark upon the long road to recovery with confidence, Mr Parry added.