I see from todays BBC News frontpage your EU subsidies are under fire, coinciding with Bush threatening to veto our newly passed farm bill, along with McCain saying some very unfavorable things about farm subsidies as well. The BBC HYS site showed not alot of support for continued support of farmers, and I suspect there isn't much here either.  I guess my reason for posting this is just to see the gut feelings and predictions about where farm supports are headed.  From all I read, this farm bill of ours is not as good as the last one, and it wasn't very good itself. 

The media is doing a good job of pointing out record high grain prices, but not doing well pointing out our costs are much higher.  Seems to me like farmers are being portrayed unfairly by the media. 

No change there then!

I agree that farmers do tend to get unfair treatment in the mainstream media when it comes to subsidies.

However, I do wonder if some if it is self-inflicted. For years the industry acted in quite a shifty manner when ever the issue of subsidies was raised. People were left with the impression that it was something farmers didn't really want to talk about - and to some extent it led to the perception that there was something to hide.

In recent years the industry has got far better at explaining why subsidies are needed and what taxpayers get for their money in return. But I can't help but think that it hasn't been enough to reverse the damage done by years of silence.

I guess there is a lot of ignorance about farming and, at the subconcious level, a majority of townsfolk envy our rural way of life whilst, at the same time forgetting that we have to earn our living from this way of life.

Whenever the question of subsidies to farmers comes up however, my mind also goes to the billions of pounds the taxpayer gives to other industries and to other sectors each year. The question of subsidies however, does not begin and end with farming. Take for example the Olympics due in London in 2012. £900 million is already trickling out of our pockets into the black hole of the East End of London because this government decided that the Olympics would be a good thing for somebody somewhere.Then there are the Arts. I for one think that the Arts need subsidies (from the beginning of time they have been subsidised) and arts subsidies are the subject of much debate.

However, many of us have always said that agriculture should not have been subsidised in the blanket way it has been. This is because subsidies ALWAYS lead to distortion or inbalance of markets, and undistorted markets tell us truths about supply and demand. We can then use this truth  to allocate scarce resources to get supply and demand into balance.

Subsidies if applied, and there are cases to be made for subsidies from time to time, should only be for a very limited period until a desired market trend has been established, they should then be removed.

The problem is that politicians hardly every take subsidies off in time because too many public sector workers jobs depend on them.

In my view there is a need for some genuine research to establish a formulae to tell politicians WHEN to take off subsidies. My own view is that they should remain in place for 1.5 times a natural market cycle.

Isabel Davies:

farmers do tend to get unfair treatment in the mainstream media when it comes to subsidies

I have noticed several 'stories' recently which seem to rely on some weird form of alternative economic theory.  The public is being told that farm subsidies are one of the causes of high food prices, and not only is the public paying a higher price for food in the shops, but also paying for it again through taxation.

This theory only works if farmers are achieving an economic return on their labour and capital investment from market prices and the subsidies are going straight into the farmers' pockets as extra income.  As we all know, even though CAP reform has removed direct production subsidies and what we now receive is supposed to provide environmental benefits, in large sectors of the industry SPS still provides the cushion between financial viability and bankruptcy.  In other words, it allows the food processing and retail sectors to buy produce at below the economic cost of production.

Unfortunately, in the general press (and TV) it is only the gross subsidy payments which attract any attention. 

IMHO the best counter to this adverse comment the industry could make would be to raise awareness of the mediocre and often extremely poor economic circumstances of many farmers.

I don't know if anyone saw the recent series 'Blood Sweat and T-shirts' on BBC3 - where a group of young Brit fashionistas was taken to India to experience working in garment factories, sweat shops and on a cotton farm.  Apart from amply demonstrating that today's urban youth are complete wimps with no idea of hard work, it did bring home the appalling conditions suffered by third world workers to provide cheap clothing for the West.

I wouldn't suggest that the average British hill farmer, say, is in the same category as these Indian workers, but I find it is typical of modern British culture that public sympathies can be aroused for farm animal welfare issues or for the need to give financial sustainability to third world farmers through Fair Trade agreements, whilst the very poor financial circumstances of many British farms is largely ignored.

This sort of links with what Jacobus has just said about setting out the facts in a digestible form. I have just read Matthew Naylor's blog post which revealed his irritation with this morning's Farming Today episode which he felt was hinting that farmers are moaning about rising costs.

I've just had a listen and have to say that I didn't get that impression. I thought they made an effort to tease out of the interviewees some really compelling information.

For example, I think everyone can relate to the dairy farmer's rising cost problem when he explained that his tractor is costing about £170 to full and he can burn that fuel in a day.

He reckons his costs of production are now 26.4p/litre which means he is just breaking even.

Similarly, it hits home when the sheep farmer in the Dales explained that the sheep feed cost £140/t last year and is currently £229.

The bit that didn't really work is when the sheep farmer was asked why she carried on and she said something about loving it where she was. I think that is when we lose the public - because they are thinking "It's your choice - if you don't like it, do something else."

You can lsiten again to it yourself here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/farmingtoday/

""The bit that didn't really work is when the sheep farmer was asked why she carried on and she said something about loving it where she was. I think that is when we lose the public - because they are thinking "It's your choice - if you don't like it, do something else.""

A lot of farmers are not trained for anything else (some of the older farmers have no formal ag training anyway).   If you have lived on the farm and have farmed all your life, its difficult to find somewhere else to live and work to do.  How many have actual pensions to fall back on.  If they sell the farm they sell not only the business but the house as well.  If you have to live on the breadline, at least you are doing it in the country.   Just a few reasons why they keep going.  What the great "unwashed" doint seem to realise is that in the not too distant future "loving it where she was" will just not be enough to keep her there.

Sarah, Taunton

Hi Sarah  - I agree with all your points.

All I am saying is that when the public hear lines like that they don't think like that. I once heard a talk by a BBC journalist who said that viewers watching a news report about tough times in the farming industry were not thinking sympathetic thoughts. They were looking at the large farmhouse kitchen where the interview was taking place and thinking - mine isn't as big as that/ nice house - why don't you sell it.

I am not saying it is right - I am just saying that is how it is. 

Isabel Davies:

They were looking at the large farmhouse kitchen

This reinforces the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words.

Of our five senses, Sight is the predominant one and Hearing the second, Touch, Taste and Smell follow on. Supermarkets major on Sight with whiffs of Smell.

 Another thread talks of the need for there to be pictures of the farming community showing the 'seamy' side of the story. However, I doubt that this can be adequately done because the 'seamy' side is much to gory and yuckee for the TV camera's to show.

Can you imagine the average viewer watching me dagging shitty sheep for hours on end or trying to revive unviable lambs. What about sawing the dead calf in half (I'm not a poet who doesn't know it) inside the cow?

What about shooting, paunching and skinning the rabbit and gutting the fish etc etc.

The TV viewer will watch some of this in the context of a Cookery, Animal Vetinary or Countryside Events programme, but somehow they cannot connect all this together into a 'perception that this is really what life is like on the farm. In any case it is difficult on TV to give a sense of timeless perspective as programmes start and end whereas countrylife goes on and on.

I do think however that TV Stations such as Horse and Country (channel 280 for me) help others to see our way of life in its wider perspective although even here it is 'sanitized' somewhat and the fact is that a lot of the prominent Horsey people have pots of money which comes through in the programmes.

 There was a time when the radio programme The Archers reflected countryside realities but that has not been the case for many years.

I fear that for most people in Britain, the Countryside inside their heads is a wonderful picture of elysian fields populated by those mystical figures Corydon and Diana basking in a Utopian Paradise. The truth is that this picture matters so much to those people who don't live there, that their minds resist all efforts to change.

Farmers are not the only people who gripe about their pay, teachers, cops, firemen, autoworkers, even baseball players have all threatened to strike or gone on strike in my lifetime, the baseball players did it twice, and I just remembered the screenwriters guild strike not even a year ago.  Farmers are in a strange position because first of all they don't draw a paycheck and second what they produce is absolutely essential.  However if a profit were guaranteed on every bushel of grain or pound of beef, overproduction would be the rule of thumb.  Governments want some degree of control over food production, I think that is the true reason behind subsidies.  Certain media types portray this situation as "huge agribusinesses drawing millions in taxpayer money".   Most hoot and holler about wanting to protect the family farm, but never really come up with any idea of how to do that.  I have never ,mentioned this, but due to a base that was almost totally milo when I started farming, from 1988 to 1996 I farmed without any subsidy, I felt I could not participate in the program because at the time it would have forced me to grow one crop almost entirely.  I expect most of us could farm without subsidies, but we need to be weaned off over a period of 5-10 years, and the transition would not be pretty, especially in Europe.  If we really went without, I am pretty sure food prices would end up being higher at the end of it all.

Peter touches on a fact that farmers are not the only people getting tax money.  It is a common practice here for communities to offer tax abatements to draw new business, ie no property taxes for 10-20 years, that is a subsidy.  Also, low interest and no interest loans....if I didn't have to pay property taxes and interest, that would be a pretty good subsidy for me, even though no check ended up in my mailbox.  People who end up working for these businesses are being subsidised indirectly,because their job would not exist otherwise.

What the real downfall to farmers has been in my opinion is our consistant failure to organize ourselves.  We have organizations that are suppose to represent us, but they do a dismal job.  If we had something along the line of OPEC, that spanned national borders, we would be in fat city, but not much chance of that when you can't get 2 farmers on the same section to unite. 

I've never really bought the argument that farmers don't know how to do anything else other than farming. It always seems to be an excuse for maintaining the status quo - not earning much and complaining about it. Most farmers have a good grasp of mechanics (keeping  knackered tractors and kit going), practical skills (welding up aforementioned kit, fencing, building, concreting etc) and bookmaking, people and economics (all that form filling) and staff management, not to mention working incredibly hard in tough conditions under their own steam (lambing in winter, milking at the crack of dawn every day).

It sounds like a list of skills lots of employers are crying out for. What farmers really mean when they say they can't do anything else is that they enjoy being their own bosses and are too stubborn to work for anybody else!!

Did anyone hear Radio 4's File on Four last night - very good investigation into the very strong likelihood that speculators could be big drivers of rising food prices. If it is right, even in part, it could make this "boom" into a "bubble" - and we all know what happens to bubbles - they burst! Where dot.com and sub-prime led, food commodities could follow....? Let's hope not! Have a listen and see what you think - there's some real examples of food price pressure in Ghana and some US farmers lamenting the volatility, plus some good background on commodity speculation:

 http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2008/05/21/110572/food-commodity-bubble-driven-by-speculation.html

fifth columnist:

 

I've never really bought the argument that farmers don't know how to do anything else other than farming. It always seems to be an excuse for maintaining the status quo - not earning much and complaining about it. Most farmers have a good grasp of mechanics (keeping  knackered tractors and kit going), practical skills (welding up aforementioned kit, fencing, building, concreting etc) and bookmaking, people and economics (all that form filling) and staff management, not to mention working incredibly hard in tough conditions under their own steam (lambing in winter, milking at the crack of dawn every day).

It sounds like a list of skills lots of employers are crying out for. What farmers really mean when they say they can't do anything else is that they enjoy being their own bosses and are too stubborn to work for anybody else!!

Wether you have a good grasp on mechanics or not if farming goes downhill you are unlikely to find a job as an agricultural engineer the only other gear that is reasonably similar is construction plant equipment which wther you have been working on it for 60 years unless you have a piece of paper to say that you are qualified and have taken tests and courses you can't touch it. Now before you set foot on a building site to work on a machine you have too supply them them a card to show you are qualified. That came in when I was still at college doing an agricultural engineering course as they also ran a plant course as well and were swamped by people in the late 50's to 60's wanting to know if there was anything they could to to work it out as they or thier employers did not want to pay for a 2 to 4 year course to tell them what they already knew and had been doing for 30 odd years.

I for one am useless at welding as I haven't got a steady enough hand as I shake not as bad as my grandad was but bad enough that it shows when welding in that it look more like something a bird has left behind as opposed too an actual weld.

Again building if you work for a construction company if you don't have a certificate it doesn't matter if you have done if for 50 years they are not going to employ you especially if they have someone just leaving school who they could pay less will get a grant on an apprenticeship scheme and would hopefully be with them for a longer time and so would recoup what it costs them to train them and get the certification as opposed to someone in thier mid 40's.

Fencing other than farms (who usually do their own to keep costs lower) the only other people that have fences put are are people with horses who have the nack of being very slow or not paying up at all. and brother of a neighbour went in to building sand schools and putting fences up with in a year he was declared bankrupt because people didn't pay as they knew it would cost him more to take them to court to get the money. Its the same with the NHS they spend millions a year on settling out of courts on bo