ORGANISATIONS that support stressed farmers are to receive an extra £100,000 funding.

Lord Bach, Minister for Food and Farming, said many farmers were facing severe cash flow problems because of the single farm payment fiasco.

"In order to help people who find these difficulties stressful, we have substantially increased the amount of funding available to organisations dealing with hardship issues," he said.

Farmers in England should have received their single payment - which replace the old production payments - in December.

But the process fell into chaos with the payment date put back to March and then the end of June.

Mark Addison - head of the Rural Payments Agency since March 16 - has introduced measures to speed up the payment.

And Margaret Beckett, in her previous role as secretary of state at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, said 80 per cent part payments will go to those still waiting as soon as a system can be set up.

Chris Andrews, of the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution (RABI), said: "Farmers just want to know when they will get their money."

Organisations to receive funding are RABI; Farm Crisis Network; Rural Stress Information Network; Samaritans and the ARC-Addington Fund.

A spokesman for the National Farmers' Union, in York, said its offices were receiving many calls from worried farmers.

"Many are out of sheer frustration - people who have been waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, and getting to their wits end as to when they are likely to see any money," she said.

On Tuesday more than half a billion pounds had been paid to almost half the claimants.