Set-aside exists primarily to reduce over-production of the food crops it replaces and to permit reductions in the costs of agricultural price support in the European Union (EU) (Floyd 1992). In Britain, set-aside became a prominent feature of our farmland in autumn 1992, when wide-ranging reforms of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) meant that farmers would be compensated for cuts in the support price of cereals, oilseeds and protein crops only if they set aside at least 15% of their land area growing these crops.