The Prime Minister will warn today that Britain's exit from the European Union could cost farmers an extra £330m a year to export their goods abroad.
Cameron has been touring the country and recently visited a farm in north Wales. He is expected to say farmers could 'suffer enormously' if the British people voted to leave the 28-nation bloc.
“If we left this single market and, as some suggest, relied on World Trade Organisation rules, the extra costs of exporting British beef would be £240m a year. An extra £90m would be added to the cost of British lamb exports.”
“British agriculture, British farmers and British jobs could suffer enormously if we were to leave the single market.”
He said that more than 90% of UK lamb and beef exports currently go to the EU.
The farming sector contributes £9.9 billion to the UK economy and employs almost half a million people.
“British farmers and food producers rely on the single market,” Cameron will say.
“It gives them access to 500 million consumers, to whom they can sell their goods on an open, unrestricted basis. No tariffs, no barriers, no bogus health and safety rules designed to keep our products out.”
Farmers 'hampered' by EU deals
But according to former Defra minister Owen Paterson, farmers would benefit leaving the EU as they would be free from directives and subsidy policies.
Paterson said money could be better used in a targeted and efficient manner.
"I believe that the United Kingdom has a great future beyond the political arrangements of the European Union," Paterson said at the Oxford Farming Conference in January this year.
"Agriculture and food production is hampered by our membership of the Common Agricultural Policy. CAP negotiations between 28 countries inevitably mean that we have to accept compromises, these are at best deeply unsatisfactory and at worst actively damaging to UK farmers."
Defra split over membership
Farming Minister George Eustice has said he will be backing the campaign to bring the UK out of the EU, putting him in conflict with Defra Secretary Liz Truss, who is joining the Prime Minister in his calls for Britain to remain a member of the Union.
Truss said it was in Britain's economic interest and 'means we can focus on vital economic and social reform at home.'
Prime Minister Cameron called the referendum for 23 June and Eustice said he deserved 'huge credit' for delivering the referendum.
"We now have an opportunity to debate our future, how we are governed and how our laws are made" he said.
"I have been an advocate of renegotiation for fifteen years but, in the end, despite the endeavours of David Cameron, the sort of fundamental reform I wanted to see was not possible.
"I have therefore come to the conclusion that the only way to deliver the change I want to see is to vote to leave and end the supremacy of EU law.
"I believe if this country has the courage to act decisively and take control, then in five years’ time the only question people will ask is why we didn’t do it sooner."
