ONE of the most controversial decisions ever taken by the EU - to pay farmers billions of Euros for not growing food - was scrapped yesterday but the decision set off a new row.

The move has not been greeted well in all quarters

Set-aside - paying farmers to take land out of production - was created some 15 years ago to reduce unsaleable mountains and lakes of butter, beef, olive oil and wine caused by over-production by EU farmers earning huge subsidies.

But the scheme itself was hugely expensive to police, often using satellite technology to "spy" on land claimed to have been set-aside but was still in production, and critics alleged that it was wide open to fraud.

A worldwide shortage of wheat, caused by poor harvests and a big switch to bio-fuel production in the Americas, means that full production on all land in Europe will be allowed from 2008.

This should add some 10 to 17 tonnes to the European harvest, according to Neil Parish, the Conservative MEP who is chairman of the European Parliament's agriculture committee.

The move has not been greeted well in all quarters, however. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds complains that rare farmland birds, which had benefited from thousands of acres of "wild" set-aside land, would come under threat once again from intensive farming.