David's Digest

In these days of so-called democratic government the removal of the hereditary entitlement to sit on the red benches was probably inevitable. But an entirely elected House of Lords - as last weeks Commons vote may have presaged - would be to take reform too far.
We would end up with a weaker version of the Commons, which is, for the most part, ineffective against the power of the ruling party and its whips. And the valuable scrutinisation of bills, hastily and imperfectly dealt with by the Commons, would be all but lost as Party took precedence over all other considerations. In other words a waste of money and space.
OK, the House of Lords is far from perfect as the current cash for honours debacle illustrates. But jokes about superannuated peers are unjust. Age does not necessarily dim the intelligence of people with years of experience in industry or government - qualities that sometimes seem to be the least criteria needed for membership of the Commons.

You couldn't make it up. The Rural Payments Agency, with 25,000 outstanding cases from 2005 still to sort out and most 2006 caims only partially paid has decided to upgrade its public relations department. And it is doing it at a published cost of nearly £245,000 per year. Whether this comes out of the money allocated to farming or from some other source is not clear. But it can only ultimately come from taxpayers who are being abused almost as seriously as those who should have received the full payments due to them.
The first job the new department will presumably need to tackle is to try to justify why it has been brought into existence in the first place. And after that, what?
Predictably it will try to persuade the populace, including farmers, that the Agency is doing a wonderful job. If the new department can do that it will certainly earn all that money. But unless the people on whose behalf it will be spinning improves their performance exponentially I, for one, will not believe them.

I listened to Any Questions on BBC Radio 4 last evening. One of the panelists was David Miliband. The programme came from Hampshire so I expected a question on the recent damning report by the all party EFRA Parliamentary Committee on DEFRA's performance regarding Single Farm Payments; a report which, incidentally, DEFRA must respond to within eight weeks.
There were questions on Iran and the British sailors; casino's - if we wanted them and where; global warming and the UK's response; and of course, the Labour Party leadership when Tony Blair goes. But nothing at all about one of the most critical Select Committee reports in history. Was this because no-one in the audience understood its significance or a reflection of the programme producers regard for agriculture?
The greatest personal interest centered around whether or not Miliband would stand for the Labour leadership in competition with Gordon Brown. Yet again, despite pressure from the chairman, Jonathan Dimbleby and other panel members he refused to answer yes or no.

It's at times like this that I'm glad I'm no longer a livestock farmer. How on earth do you deal with EU regulations that allow livestock movement one day and then, with no further spread of disease, prohibits it the next. If it were as simple as that farmers might be able to get to grips with it in time. But its much more complicated to the point of virtual unintelligibility - if there is such a word.

After getting it wrong once it's easy to understand officials don't want to make the same mistake again. And everyone wants to avoid a repetition. But its five weeks since the last case of F&M for goodness sake and even more to the point, the feed situation on some farms is getting desparate, never mind the cash flow. How much longer must the affected areas suffer especially now they are becoming aware of DEFRA's parsimonious attitude to proper compensation?

What makes all this so unreasonable is the double standards the EU appears to use when dealing with Brazil. It has just been announced that an investigation by the EU itself has revealed that Brazil has no systematic audit system for animal health at either state or national level; that there is no programme to monitor F&M vaccination; that the reliability of records on where animals have been for the 90 days before slaughter and export is, to say the least, questionable; furthermore, that animals ineligible for export have been exported.

I have just listened to the Radio 4 programme "You and Yours" which today invited people to phone in with their thoughts on the future of agriculture. This followed a speech by Hilary Benn at a conference yesterday and anticipated Marianne Fischer Boel's "Health Check" on the CAP. It was also set against the background of a year of animal diseases, floods and drought.

I don't know if any of them will read this but in case they do I want to congratulate the farmers who phoned in to the programme for the mature and factual way in which they explained the problems facing them without whingeing and without antagonising consumers. Almost without exception they did a superb job of putting over the case for agriculture and home production.

They even stayed calm, if frustrated, at Benn's announcement that the time had come for farmers to take responsibility for DEFRA's mistakes in releasing the F&M virus from Pirbright. OK, he didn't put it quite like that but that's what he meant and he must not be allowed to get away with it.

Yes, there were a few non farming critics who complained about the price of food and asked why farming should receive any aid at all. And a presenter asked why farmers did not insure against disease. This was dealt with brilliantly by NFU economist, Carmen Suarez, who pointed out that insurance was not available because of the high level of risk. She did not add, but could have done, that insurance companies are as aware as farmers are of the lack of port security for animal health and of continuing imports of meat from countries like Brazil where F&M is endemic.

This was the biggest worry of farmers at Vale & Wallingford NFU AGM last evening where I gave a talk. Like them I would be appalled if DEFRA made the proposal for farmers to pay hefty levies to pay for government blunders into law. We must fight it with vigour and determination.

Just as we began to think some sectors of farming were looking potentially better; that we've had a good autumn after a disastrous summer and that as a result we might be able to drag ourselves out of the mire, it all goes pear shaped again.

DEFRA says it has overspent (probably on consultants fees employed to comment on what previous consultants had already told them) and would need to cut its budget by £270mill. Most of it, we are told, will come from its various agencies, set up to administer government schemes. But it would be a miracle if the effects didn't trickle down to farm level and reduce what was previously due to be paid to farmers.

In the next breath Billery Hen tells us that we, the farmers, must pay for sorting out infectious diseases - the kind that escape from his government laboratories or arrive in this country on infected meat which is not noticed or sent packing by government port inspectors. Furthermore, Billery tells us, it will be so much better for farmers to have responsibilty for this because, after all, it is farmers who benefit most from healthy animals. What kind of distorted logic is that?

Then, from Brussels, we have it confirmed that SFP's will be capped as widely predicted and that bigger farmers will lose some of their entitlement because they don't need the money. The likely loss to British farms will be some £56mill which is more than for any other country because we have the best structure in the EU. Again, it is illogical and sounds to me like the politics of envy.

It is time we had some new management at DEFRA and the Agricultural Office of the European Commission. I know of two people who are looking for work. One is Adam Applegarth, former Chief Executive of Northern Rock. The other is Steve McLaren formerly the manager of the England football team. Well, they couldn't do a worse job than the people we've got - could they?

I did not start blogging simply to criticise DEFRA, even though it might seem like I did. But when a government department makes as many mistakes as they do its difficult not to have a go at them.

This latest own goal concerns the accommodation chosen by DEFRA personnel when they came to Norfolk to supervise the recent outbreak of bird flu. It has been reported and not denied that they booked themselves in to a stately home hotel whose room rates are £185 for bed and breakfast and £310 per day for full board. Not only that but the hotel was in Suffolk, 22 miles from the outbreak, so it wasn't exactly the closest they could have found.

In the same week it was revealed that DEFRA is being forced to cut its budget by £270million because of over spending its a bit rich, don't you think? Do they ever learn? Do they care about public opinion? The answers must be - no they don't, so long as they live high on the hog on money intended to improve the hard pressed rural economy.

You may have missed it but I knew you would want to know. According to yesterdays Daily Telegraph the Tory MP, Mark Hoban, asked in Parliament how much it had cost to display photographs of DEFRA secretaries of state at its London HQ over the last five years. During that period, may I remind you, three politicians have held the top job there - Margaret Beckett, David Miliband and Hilary Benn.

Jonathan Shaw, a current junior minister at DEFRA, replied that the cost of updating the displays over the period had been £11,000. Further, that the present posters are shortly to be replaced by electronic alternatives "which are cheaper to update and have less impact on the environment". So thats alright then. Although I would have thought they would get a better deal at Boots.

Isn't it great to know that DEFRA's funds are being so well spent! That despite the £300mill fine imposed on the department by the EU for incompetence over the administration of Single Farm Payments and the resulting cuts in research, compensation for imported animal diseases and other vital departmental activities ministers can still find the funds to massage their own ego's.

Glancing through the jobs section of the Sunday Times today I noticed one for Chief Veterinary Officer at DEFRA; salary c£135k.

Now that Debbie Reynolds has returned to making musical comedy films (I assume) after four years in the job during which time she had to deal with a series of disease disasters, our political masters have clearly judged the time right to replace her. I had wondered if the decision had been made to appoint Debbie's deputy who has been acting Chief Vet for some time. But this ad suggests not.

The wording of the job description is rather interesting. The successful applicant will, for instance, "have a key voice in changing the relationship between Government and animal keepers so as to engender greater responsibility for animal health and welfare standards across the country". In other words he or she will be charged with removing full compensation for animals compulsorily slaughtered leaving the victims to pick up at least part of the bill.

Significantly, the ad says nothing about strengthening import controls to keep notifyable diseases out of Britain. All it says is "you will contribute to the development of national and international policies...on animal health and welfare matters".

My friend, Charles Clover, he of the Daily Telegraph, reported last weekend how DEFRA Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, is busy promoting public access for all, while denying it to a length of foreshore in front of his ancestral home. Moreover, the Ramblers claim there are signs outside the imposing house on the Blackwater estuary in Essex saying "no public footpath", private garden, and "please do not trespass".

Its not the first time I've heard the story. I remember hearing many years ago when Hilary's father, Tony, or Anthony as he was called then, that he insisted on maintaining his privacy along that piece of beach. As I remember it, when Hilary's grandfather, William Wedgewood Benn, bought the property in the mid 1930's, it came with rights to the shore and out to sea "as far as a man could throw a spear". Clearly, Tony, the high profile, equality loving left winger, who renounced his rights to inherit his fathers peerage (he should have been called Viscount Stansgate) does not believe totally in equal rights for all.

Now, because of his DEFRA job it falls to Hilary to sort it out. There can be little doubt that he will be forced to comply with the legislation his own department is writing and before long the Ramblers will be able to ramble past Stansgate Abbey just as they will the rest of the British coastline. But isn't it interesting that the high principled Wedgewood Benn's have felt justified in keeping their ancient rights for seventy years while the privacy of the rest of us has been constantly eroded.

As George Orwell said in Animal Farm "Some pigs are more equal than others".

Motor fuel from farm crops was once the great white hope of UK cereal and oil seed rape growers. At the time the price of wheat was about £60/tonne and the illusion of plentiful supplies for ever more was widespread and believed by the chattering classes. The NFU, the government, the EU and agribusiness thought it was a good idea too and the concept of a compulsory inclusion of 2.5% of bio-fuel in petrol and deisel was born.

Sadly, now bio-fuel inclusion day has arrived, the picture has changed. Wheat is worth rather more than it was, as is oil seed rape, and it has, in any case, suddenly become public knowledge that much of the bio-fuel that is available at the pumps is derived from imported palm oil and soya. Add to that the fact that the balance between energy gained and that expended is said to be marginal in some cases and the current hostility to bio-fuels and the RTFO was predictable.

What made it inevitable was the rising price of food. Consumers, prompted by the media, have quickly realised that commodities diverted to make fuel were significant in raising the price of food in the shops and the scene was set for a negative reaction. And bodies that might have been expected to support green energy a few years ago have suddenly become vociferous in their opposition.

How quickly things change. How fickle is public opinion. How predictable that when costs rise to support vital supplies consumers always favour the cheapest option, whatever they may say they really believe.

Yesterday the Financial Times and the Guardian reported that British Chancellor, Alistair Darling, was writing to all his EU counterparts to urge them to abolish the CAP. He was said to be of the opinion that some parts of it keep food prices above world market levels and he wants an end to all direct payments to farmers because they are "unacceptable".

Surprise, surprise. It is the typical short sighted reaction of a politician who seeks to shift the blame for high food prices from government to producers. Never mind international agreements; forget that it was his (and other) governments policies that led to the decline in domestic production. He ignores the fact that goverments around the world were warned for years that they were heading for a food supply disaster that is now happening forcing prices up because of insufficient supply.

Furthermore he deliberately does forgets two other key facts. One, that farmers have been subsidising consumers for much of the last ten years as they continued producing, albeit at reduced levels, for returns that in many cases were less than their costs. Two, although commodity prices have risen sharply in the last few months, production costs have gone up by at least the same percentage, if not greater.

Stop direct payments and farmers will very quickly be losing money again. And what will happen then? They will once again reduce production making the food supply crisis even worse. Alistair Darling is not only dishonest for attempting to wriggle out of agreed policies. He must also be very stupid.

As France takes over the Presidency of the EU today with the objective of persuading member states to ratify the Lisbon Treaty following the Irish rejection of it, as well as dealing with a bunch of other equally hot issues, not least among which is the energy crisis, its first major event is a food conference.

On Thursday France will host a major event entitled "Who will feed the World?". Speakers will include Agriculture Commissioner, Marrian Fischer Boel; the President of the European Parliament; Hans-Gert Pottering, French Agriculture Minister, Michel Barnier; French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner; Director General of the WTO, Pascal Lamy; and Director General of FAO, Jacques Diouf.

An impressive line-up, you will agree and the French are clearly taking the food crisis seriously. But what a pity all those people, who could have changed the policies that have exacerbated if not led to the problem, did not have the foresight to do so. They were, presumably, all listening to advice from political economists, all educated at the same kinds of establishments, all teaching the same misguided policies, which led them to recommend the exact opposite of what was required.

Doubtless the papers that will be presented will be studied exercises in self-justification to the effect that "it wasn't my fault guv". Whereas what is needed is an honest admission that they got it wrong and a willingness to change radically from their established path. But I'm not optimistic.

Will someone please explain to me how it was that in the 1950's, when the badger population was much lower than it is now - because we hunted them - we were able, using the same tests as today, to eliminate TB from the UK cattle herd? It took us a few years of regular testing and a lot of infected cattle were slaughtered. But government, vets and farmers working together achieved it. And a disease that had been the scourge of humans as well as cattle (because not all milk was pasteurised then and people caught TB from drinking it) disappeared from our shores.

So, I ask again - if fewer badgers enabled the elimination of cattle TB then, why wouldn't it do the same today?

I note that Mr Tony Cooper has recently been appointed boss of the Rural Payments Agency - a job he has been doing without the official title for two years. Can this be a reward for the fact that there are still Single Farm Payment cases unresolved for three years? That there are still underpayments, over payments, partial payments, disputes about maps and so on, some of which date back to the start of the scheme?

If Mr Cooper was really good enough to have his appointment confirmed wouldn't he have sorted out all the historical anomalies by now? And wouldn't he be confident enough to promise that this years payments would be issued by the end of the year rather than hoping they might be paid early in the New Year? 

Poor show that all this is, the truly guilty ones are those who dreamed up such a complicated system in the first place - the top civil servants of Defra led by Mrs Margaret Beckett who has driven off in her luxury caravan into the sunset of her political career with a whopping pension without so much as a backward glance.

You might think, with looming world food shortages and resulting inflationary prices in the shops that EU officials in DGX11 would be preoccupied with thinking of solutions to avoid a deepening crisis. But guess what - some of them have found time to tell this country that acres must be banned. Only hectares remain as the official measurement and acres should never be mentioned again.

Last week colleagues of those who ruled on acres, presumably, were arguing (again) about the shape and dimensions of vegetables, apparently, confirming that it is an offence to sell carrots that are curved too much or are forked, with similar nonsensical regulations for other roots and fruits.

Do they not understand the extent to which they destroy their credibility and authority over important matters by coming out with such stupid and unnecessary statements? Acres will disappear of their own accord once people (like me) who grew up with them have passed on. Until then, while being fully aware of how many acres make up a hectare, I shall continue to think and use the measurements with which I feel comfortable.

And as for throwing away good food, whatever its shape, is not only daft but also irresponsible given the problems mentioned above. So, get real you lot in Brussels. Leave unimportant matters alone and concentrate on the real problems facing food and farming.

I was wondering what to write about yesterday's collapse of the Doha Round of the WTO but Matt, in his The Longer View, has beaten me to it. I really don't have anything to add to what he has said about it at the moment so I happily refer you to his comments.

I do, however, have a view on the recent destruction by eco terrorists of the GM potato trials on a field near Tadcaster in Yorkshire. I met the Leeds University scientist in charge of the trials at a conference a few weeks ago. He was a hard working and genuine researcher whose main aim in life was clearly to establish the facts on the trials he was conducting.

I think he had a premonition of what might happen to his plots. He was concerned even then at publication of the location of the trials and hoped the anti GM brigade would allow the crop to reach maturity so he could publish the truth - whatever that turned out to be.

His reaction to the destruction of the trial - that it was Luddite and akin to the burning of books that did not co-incide with Nazi philosophy in the 1930's - was understandable, given his frustration. It has been criticised as being too harsh. But what the critics really mean is that it was politically incorrect. For who can seriously fault the professor's reasoning.

If the trials had proved that GM potatoes were resistant to cyst nematodes that are costing UK potato growers £50mill/year to try to control with chemicals they would have provided yet more evidence that this technology should be adopted here. And the ability to use GM crop varieties like those grown on some 120mill hectares around the world last year would have provided an incentive and a more level playing field for UK farmers to support any fresh attempt to re-establish talks on free trade.

It was probaby too much to expect, in the middle of the biggest financial crisis for nearly eighty years, that the Prime Minister would take the opportunity in his Cabinet reshuffle to give food production the priority it deserves.

Instead, by down-sizing Defra and putting Ed Miliband in charge of climate change and carbon footprints he has once again elevated the environment above food security. I do not deny that the Miliband portfolio is an important one. Indeed I wish him success with it on behalf of myself and all who come after me, although like weather related ministerial posts of the past it may well turn out to be a poison chalice.

But food security is of at least equal importance and is, of course, related to climate change. If Gordon Brown had been paying attention over the past few years, or if his advisers had kept him informed of the building world crisis of food security, he could, in his reshuffle, have made changes that began to take the urgent actions needed to promote domestic food production at least to where it was in the early 1990's.

As it is, by leaving Hilary Benn in charge - a man who has never in his mind stopped being Overseas Development Secretary - he has missed yet another oppportunity to correct some of the mistakes of the last ten or twelve years.

According to Conservative Central Office Defra has admitted it paid out £1.1m over the last three years to removal contractors. Peter Ainsworth, Shadow Environment Secretary, said this amounted to £7,365 per week and suggested ministers should spend a little less time sorting out where to put the tables and chairs and a bit more on delivering a better environment.

When it comes to agriculture, which is also under Defra's remit, in case some ministers had forgotten, its actions are more reminiscent of moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. The Department may not yet have been fatally damaged by the iceberg of food shortages but it probably will. When it eventually capsizes and sinks we must just hope it doesn't drag our industry down with it.

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.

Wouldn't you think, given the state of national and world economies, that politicians would be too busy to have time to fiddle their expenses? Is it very surprising that the greedy bankers who got us into this mess aped the behaviour of government ministers who were themselves abusing the system? Don't we, the electors, have a right to expect better of members of Parliament who crave our support every few years on the basis that they are only in politics for our good?

As the Daily Telegraph has released more disgusting details each day the guilty ones have whined "I've done nothing wrong" or "I made a mistake". And they've gone on to blame the system - which they and their colleagues initiated and over which they have signally failed to execise discipline or morality. 

Regular readers of my thoughts will know that I have never had much time for most politicians. I am willing to concede that some are not corrupt and try to do their job with sincerity and honesty. But the rotten apples in the political barrel seem to have polluted most of the rest who privately complain they are not paid enough and have to make up their money somehow.

What rubbish! If most of them were paid on performance they would have trouble getting half what they are paid as MP's - with no expenses, Indeed, they'd be out of work at present because their efforts would have been found wanting and their cost unjustifiable. Meanwhile they continue to ride the gravy train.

Very soon they will be bleating to the electorate about low turn-outs at elections. But their collective behaviour has destroyed any inclination I might have had to vote for any of them.

Finally, you might wonder what all this has to do with farming in which this strand is supposed to specialise. Well, look at the title. And then please pass on my apologies to pigs for associating them with politicians.

Several years ago my bank adopted the habit of regularly promoting senior clerks to junior management positions. Staff have to be trained, of course, but what happened in our region was that each newly promoted person was given farming to learn on. Over the course of five years I had five different bank managers and it was extremely tiresome.

One day I met the local director of the bank and complained to him that I felt we local farmers were training his managers; that it took a great deal of time to familiarise each new candidate with farming in general and the complications of our individual businesses in particular; that I could not tolerate having to start from scratch and explain every historic detail whenever I wished to modify my banking arrangements; furthermore that if the practice continued I would change banks. I added that I was not alone in feeling that way.

The director listened and clearly took the message to heart because he contacted me later to say that all things being equal there would be no change of manager for at least five years. And I am pleased to say the bank stuck by that assurance.

I feel the same way about ministers of agricutlure and I suspect Peter Kendall feels it even more strongly. Since 2005 there have been five of them - Lord Whitty, Lord Bach, Lord Rooker, Jane Kennedy, and now Jim Fitzpatrick. OK, I respect Jane Kennedy's reasons for resigning from the post. I couldn't work for Gordon Brown either. But there is an inescapable feeling that the Prime Minister couldn't care less about farming and is simply filling the post with placemen who have been loyal to him without any consideration for their likely knowledge of or commitment to the job. In reality, of course, he is only really concerned at present with saving his political skin.

My brief contacts with Jane Kennedy, despite her being an urban MP from Liverpool, led me to believe she was learning fast and had become a worthy advocate for farming in the nine months she held the job. Jim Fitzpatrick may, for all I know, be a very nice chap who will be just as consciencious. But he represents Poplar and Canning Town in London, which doesn't sound like a very good start. And given there will be a General Election within twelve months, perhaps sooner, his tenure too is likely to be a short one.

What a pity we can't influence politicians like I and others did the bank.

As the worlds top finance ministers meet in London to discuss the ongoing crisis and try to agree how to curb the risk taking of the bankers who got us into this mess in the first place, it seems clear they will fail. Yes, a few of the ministers want to cap bankers bonuses but most don't think it would work. In any case, says Alistair Darling, we cannot afford to cut bankers pay because if we do they will leave their jobs and go to another country where the gravy train still rolls.

Am I being naive if I ask why we need to hang on to the guilty ones? Wouldn't we have been better off and saved the cost and ignominy of bailing them out if they had left some time ago, before they dragged us all down? Isn't it obvious their greed will lead them to try the same games again if they are not controlled and probably with similar consquences?

Ah, but these people can earn a lot of money for Britain if they are allowed a free rein, say those who defend the status quo. And huge bonuses for themselves merely by shuffling bits of paper, making a few phone calls and putting other peoples cash at risk, say I. But I don't suppose my complaints will change anything. After all, bankers are important to our economy.

But don't you find it interesting that there is no such defence of food producers. We receive modest payments from government for playing a key role in feeding the nation and all hell breaks loose. Much of the time we sell commodities for less than it has cost us to produce them. But does anyone think it appropriate that farmers should be paid big bonuses for the continuity of our efforts, often in bad weather and despite regularly recording losses on the operation?

Not a bit of it. Because food producers are not considered to be as important as bankers.

If you didn't laugh, you'd cry. According to todays Daily Mail the department of government in charge of agriculture has spent £181,000 redesigning its website. Defra has apparently changed the colour scheme after a focus group said the brown colour of its logo suggested the department was too "farm-orientated".

So, the new masthead is maroon and green so as not to appear agriculturally focussed and to reflect the current priorities and role of the Department. As Nick Herbert, the Conservative Shadow of Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, is quoted as saying "At least its now clear that, like the rest of the country, Defra have gone off Brown". 

Very amusing. But of course, it isn't really funny at all. It is yet more evidence that whatever Defra ministers may say about farming being a vital sector of the economy and how we must produce as much food as possible to feed the nation, etc, etc, they don't give a damn about us or what we do for them and for the nation. It is, in fact, outrageous.

Once again, according to some of todays newspapers, the EU is wasting its time and potentially costing consumers more money by sticking its nose into unimportant issues. Apparently the EU Parliament last week voted to ban the sale of food items by numbers and to insist they shall only be sold by weight.

In other words, if this measure becomes law, as it may well do, it will be illegal to sell eggs by the dozen, or oranges or bread rolls or any number of items by the number in a container. Instead they will have to be sold by weight and that information printed on the bag in which the goods are carried. Given that many such items are sold in transparent containers the ruling adds nothing to the information available to the purchaser because they can clearly see what they are getting.

Its yet another piece of idiotic bureaucracy of the straight banana variety which simply adds to problems and costs with no benefits to consumers and it destroys the credibility of a body that I for one am glad is there. Wouldn't you think the European Parliament had enough real problems to deal with - like the value of the Euro, the economies of Greece, Ireland and Portugal and the growing pressure to allow the commercial production of GM crops - that it wouldn't have time to spend on such nonsense. The fact that they have must indicate that the EU is overstaffed with people seeking out useless things to do and that they should be drastically culled ASAP?   

Many many years ago, when the BBC was in its infancy and the Archers just had a smallholding there was a radio programme - a very early soap opera I suppose you'd call it - on the Home Service every weekday afternoon entitled "Mrs Dale's Diary". Mrs Dale, was, for a while, played by the famous stage actress Jesse Matthews and her radio "husband" was a hard working doctor, Jim Dale.

One of the fictional Mrs Dale's catch phrases when speaking of her husbands work load was "I'm worried about Jim".

Well, I'm not worried about Jim - Paice - that is. He's taken to the job of Agriculture Minister like a duck to water. He did, of course, have a lot of experience with the brief, having been opposition spokesman on the subject for about five years. He therefore has the advantage of coming over like a man who knows his subject - a quality that has been notably absent in the last few politicians who have held the post, especially in the first few months of office.

Even better, and I am in danger of coming over all party political here, he's actually beginning to deliver some of the promises he made in opposition, despite the fact that they will prove unpopular in some quarters and will almost certainly cause him problems. I refer particularly to the consultation he's just announced on culling badgers, which is, of course, a political minefield. But he believes it is necessary and has taken the first steps towards introducing a cull next year. And cattle farmers all over the UK will thank him for it.