I didn't get a paper today but I was steered towards this article in the Observer after reading the Relfster's blog (sorry, just how sad have my Bank Holiday Mondays become I ask myself. Tea pot lid still off btw).
I was pretty annoyed by the hyperbole in the Observer article, you are going to have to read it to follow this entry but basically the article says that farmers are ripping out all the environmental features now that grain prices have risen. I've written my first ever letter to a national newspaper (I once wrote one to our local newspaper when I was fourteen. They had a headline "Man hit by lorry was lucky" say police. I wrote to suggest that he was unlucky. We digress)
OK, I'm a hypocrite on the payments for environmental stuff. I'm currently claiming a thousand or two a year from the Entry Level environmental stewardship scheme (I honestly don't know how much we get, It's a lot less than five grand a year. You might be able to find out here www.farmsubsidy.org - we trade as K.W. Naylor and Son, if that helps).
Anyway I'm a hypocrite because I argued here in an article that I wrote for the NFU a few years ago that putting a price on things like skylarks was crass and cruel because it subjected them to market forces. It was unpopular at the time and I had a spat in print with Graham Wynne from the RSPB.
I suggested that the consumer should take their responsibility seriously and could pay for these things through products if we communicated what we are doing for the environment through our brands. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, in the intervening period I have started dealing with Waitrose and become a LEAF Marque producer and I'm prouder of that than of anything else that I have done with the business in the last (ahem) fifteen years.
The ELS money was a small but helpful and supportive nudge in the right direction with our transition to becoming officially sustainable and bio-diverse. I appreciate the ELS money much more than than the Single Payment Scheme cheque (you can find out all you need to know about our cheque on www.farmsubsidy.org too: and anyone else's cheque for that matter. My candour here is enough to tell you our SPS cheque it is barely enough to pay for the tyres on dad's menoPorsche).
Anyhoo. Below is the letter that I sent to the Observer/Guardian. As a regular Guardian reader, I have finally tired of their constant carping at farmers. Most farmers are doing their best for Christ's sake. If they don't print the letter I will NEVER EVER buy the paper again (online reading doesn't count).
Madam/Sir
I was disappointed to read the article by Caroline Davies in Sunday's Observer, "Eco farming ditched as food prices soar", which suggested that UK farmers will be tempted to undo the good work of the EU-funded environmental schemes now that food prices are rising.
As a LEAF Marque farmer and participant in the Entry Level Scheme, I can assure you that her statement that "soaring food prices are threatening widespread ecological damage on the countryside" is untrue. I, too, may choose to leave the ELS environmental stewardship scheme when my five year agreement ends. The environmental benefits that it has delivered will remain, only the cost to the taxpayer will end. Now that we have been helped to embrace it, the ethos of farming sustainably remains within the culture of our business.
Through these environmental schemes, UK farmers have gratefully received taxpayers money to partially fund thousands of miles of hedgerows, dry stone walls and footpaths. During the last green revolution, after WWII, we needed to remove features like this to allow food production to be mechanised. This was how we met demand and made food affordable once more.
The investment from these environmental schemes has allowed these features to be reinstated and, since commodity prices have been very low recently, for a small price. This time the environmental features and wildlife habitats have mostly been placed in areas of the farm which are naturally less productive or naturally more environmentally sensitive. We have rebuilt the English countryside to serve the many demands placed upon it. Now that these features no longer impede efficient production, it is highly unlikely that they will ever need to be removed again.
Let us not underestimate how great the challenge for the world's farmers to produce sufficient food for the growing global population. Farmers will always strive to produce two ears of corn where one grew before. This is why food has been plentiful and affordable in Western Europe for decades. I am surprised that Ms Davies isn't heartily relieved that UK farmers are responding quickly to the increased demand for food which has caused commodity prices to rise. Increasing production is the only reaction that can slow food inflation and reduce global poverty. That the farmer and taxpayer have already united to invest time and money to deliver more food with an increased level of bio-diversity should be a point of celebration for anyone who cares about the English countryside.
I would urge any readers concerned by Ms Davies' article, to visit a participating farm on Open Farm Sunday this weekend. There are thousands of farmers who will be proud to demonstrate that the fears expressed in the article are without grounds.
Yours faithfully
MJW Naylor
Email matthew@naylorflowers.co.uk
blog www.fwi.co.uk/blogs/lincolnshire-farming-blog/
podcast www.puretilth.com
You got the MJW out - you do mean business.
I saw this article too. It's an example of very lazy journalism and suspect that a certain 'environmental' organisation is behind this 'story'. Well done for attempting to set the record straight.
Good article about IP, and a very good letter Matthew. I will forgive you the split infinitive - to partially fund ....there has never been a better time to get across our side of the story. I try to reply to every piece of lazy journalism I read, but often feel I am on my own.