David's Digest

Free advertisements for plum jobs are not normal in these pages but I thought the one I saw in the Sunday Times today should be a notable exception.

The Rural Payments Agency is looking for a Head of Operational Performance; starting salary £43,332/annum plus generous pension and annual leave with other unspecified benefits.

The successful candidate will be "dynamic and inspirational" in improving the performance of the Agency "to meet the changing needs of our stakeholders".

Excuse me but I thought the needs were substantially the same as when the RPA was initiated - to deliver statutory Single Farm Payments to farmers accurately and on time.

But the ad says the key accountabilites over the next 12 months will be "co-ordinating and managing a wide range of Management Information (MI) and working closely with stakeholders to make sure performance improvement initiatives are in place and the Agency's targets are achieved."

Exactly what that official jargon means is not clear. Are farmers the chief stakeholders or is government? If the former, lets hope, once a candidate is selected, that we can expect a dramatic speeding up of SFP payments. If the latter and the government is the dominant stakeholder, who knows what the new priorities will be? Given the financial crisis we might find ourselves, like Irish farmers, receiving our payments in installments.

 Either way, it is typical of government agencies that it has taken so long to seek someone who is "passionate about continuously improving the service provided to our customers" (which surely must be farmers?) after such a mediocre few years.

According to todays Daily Telegraph an un-named, but by implication, influential senior economic adviser to Gordon Brown told him the City of London was the only really important engine of the British economy and that "the rest of the country can be turned over to tourism".

Admittedly this advice was said to have been given sometime before the fall of Northern Rock. I should also point out that the expose has come from the UK National Defence Association which particularly deplored the fact that defence was looking at a £15bill shortfall in funding and that it was bracketed by the said economist alongside manufacturing and virtually all other industries.

There was no mention of agriculture or food in the report. But doesn't its content sound familiar? Our industry has suffered from the same kind of attitude. Government policy towards it, delivered through DEFRA, has sidelined us. Food and farming were branded unimportant. Tourism and a pretty environment were given top priority. You could just imagine that same economist telling Gordon Brown to let farming go hang and import most of our food. It is entirely consistent with what happened to defence.

And where has that advice to rely wholly on the City got us? I don't need to give an answer. It is transparently obvious to us all. And it confirms what dangerous people some economists are. Governments should sack them all and go back to legislating with common sense. But they've been listening to economists for so long they have probably lost the ability to think for themselves. Sometimes I pull out my hair in despair. And if you've seen my photograph you will realise where that leads.

After the longest and coldest winter for several years it was fairly predictable that spring would be later than usual. I've known years when we've had most of our spring drilling done by mid March. But our mainly heavy land has been far too cold and wet to carry a tractor with anything heavier than a fertiliser spreader mounted on it up to now and is only just beginning to dry sufficiently to think of making seed beds.

But the forecast for next week sounds much better and there is every prospect of being able to get on with spring work. If that turns out to be the case the modest delay in starting will not be disastrous and as long as the fine spell lasts several days we should be able to get most crops in during the almost optimum period.

My goodness, I'm sounding optimistic. That's not like me. Perhaps its because the crocusses are blooming, the daffodils bursting buds, the primroses on our banks are getting ready to make their annual show and the pussy willow is following katkins in confirming that spring is almost here. Oh yes, there is a heart beneath my crusty exterior. Its just that it isn't always obvious.

Unlike some of my farming friends I have always believed the EU does us more good than harm and have never joined the ranks of those who advocate leaving the club. I have even considered joining the Euro as a possibility in the past, although the current crisis of currency's makes it a non starter at the moment.

But why does the EU make such a fool of itself over matters that should not concern it? I have been reading about moves in the European Parliament to ban the terms Miss, Mrs, Madame, Mademoiselle, etc, and equivalents in all the various EU languages. In the same so-called "gender-neutral" initiative sportsmen will be required to be called athletes, statesmen will be known as political leaders, and artificial will replace man-made.

Is there a department in Brussels devoted to ruining the EU's credibility with such nonsense? Have officials not got enough to do running Europe? Is the Berlaymont Building and those that surround it populated entirely by bra burning feminists?

Don't get me wrong. I have no problem with women achieving high authority and I am happy to concede that many of them are better than men. Goodness knows I work with enough of them - including those who supervise my scribbles for Farmers Weekly - who are supreme examples of what I am talking about. But I cannot believe they are sensitive to longstanding interpretations of words or need the protection of the EU PC squad to consolidate their positions.

In my view this is reminiscent of previous rulings that insisted on straight banana's and sausages that were just as nonsensical. For goodness sake you lot in Brussels, spend your time and energy on important matters, like solving the worlds financial problems and stop wasting your time and our money.

The EU announced this week, in line with its target of reducing the administrative burden of the CAP by 25% by 2012, that it has removed 240 pieces of legislation some of which have been on the statute book since the 1950's. Well, hooray for the EU.

The trouble is as fast as they repeal obsolete regulations they seem to introduce new ones to replace them. It is claimed, for instance, that the recent Health Check of the CAP introduced less complex procedures, although I for one have not noticed them. The EU also says it plans to streamline cross compliance rules, change quality policies and marketing standards together with the system of geographical indications - whatever they are.

And that encapsulates the main problem. Simplification for EU officials means changes for those who have to operate under the rules. So as soon as you familiarise yourself with one set of regulations they change them. It may be OK for those whose job it is to dream up new hurdles for farmers to jump and perhaps those consultants who make a living from filling up forms for frustrated farmers. But for busy working people who have to deal with one set of each regulations each year it creates huge problems because of lack of familiarity.

Furthermore, whatever claims may be made about simplification the number of legislative requirements expected of individual farmers is massively excessive. A colleague recently calculated that most mixed farms are responsible for complying with and filling forms for up to 76 different legislative measures and the duties associated with them per year. Its a wonder we have any time to farm.

A seminar arranged by The Farmers Club at its HQ in London on Monday concluded that the introduction of GM crops to UK agriculture was necesarry and inevitable. Delegates were unanimous in believeing the technology must be one of the tools that will help farmers produce increased yields at prices affordable by consumers as food shortages begin to bite in the next few years. They were also convinced that such a development would pose no threat to human health or the environment.

Those present and participating included farmers, scientists, plant breeders and environmentalists. The general feeling throughout the seminar was that GM was a technology whose time had come. That whereas there were genuine concerns among consumers about the safety of such crops these had now almost disappeared except among extreme lobby groups. But it was felt important to persuade consumers that their previous media generated fears had been groundless and that they could now buy GM foods with confidence.

One way of doing this, it was suggested, was to publicise a booklet recently produced by Sense About Science entitled Making Sense of GM. It tackles all the issues and concerns head on and deals with them and explains them in language readily understood by lay people. Copies can be obtained from www.senseaboutscience.org