As part of Farmers Weekly's 75th anniversary we're launching a major series to identify some farming 'greats'. Supported by Browns of Wem on this thread we're turning the spotlight on the greatest farming cock-ups. Feel free to put any suggestions forward now...

To get you started here are some suggestions from some FW writers...

Anyone who puts forward a suggestion for a category will have their name entered into a prize draw to win a free subscription to Farmers Weekly. There will be a prize draw for each of the six categories that are running.

 The gratest cock-up has got to be Defra releasing foot and mouth surely nothing can top that other than Defra itself.

I have 4 in my living memory;

• Foot and Mouth
• Fox hunting ban
• Bluetounge
• Swine flu

~Meggiewes~

BSE has to be the biggest mistake, costing farmers squillions, all for nothing.

since bse never infected humans as they predicted, cattle passports should be scrapped.

For farmers world wide I believe it has been our inability to unite to have some degree of say so over the prices we receive at the farm gate for our products.  We continue to take what is offered, often below actual cost of production.  Farmers worldwide have allowed themselves to be used, often for a pathetic government subsidy.  We have failed to take advantage of the fact that our industry and what we produce is even more essential than oil, we have allowed our respective consumers and governments to take us forgranted.

The abolishon of MAFF and it's replacement with a department that couldn't organise the release of a contageous disease from a lab... oh wait, they did manage that one didn't they?

The National Scrapie Plan, what a waste of time, effort and money!

glasshouse:

BSE has to be the biggest mistake

I would agree with this. It was brought about through the de-regulation of the thatcher era, which went on further to give the banking collapse now.

I went to college in 1973 and if I had been told that BSE would happen I would not have believed it ( sorry Victor.)

BSE is such a powerful allegory of the times. For the government miss handling of things, the total demise in the creditability of scientists, who were already on thin ice after Thalidomide. This gave rise to supermarket power and the disconnect between prices on farm and in the supermarkets. People no longer believed government or science but believed supermarkets.

Now we have this seed germinating and we can only guess what the harvest will be....?

It was also the reason that I had to get out of fulltime farming due to unsustainable losses (and no compensation), I'm not bitter, not 'alf (futher apologies, this time to the late Alan Freeman). I realize that some of our younger viewers will not get some of my references, trouble when you are on granddad time!

 

its got to be defra the s..t heads must sit in the office all day wondering what outher stupid rules or regulations to bring in.

Foot and Mouth, BSE, Joining the EU late, The launch of GlobalFarmers.com

Margaret Beckett! Enough said!!!

biomassbruce

Speaking at Cereals, NFU president Peter Kendall said his vote was with Margaret Beckett's introduction of the SFP.

The EU allowing member states to control their own farming policy when it could easily have been centrally administered and all the rules set the same for all farmers.

Police watching as GM crops are ripped up.

Looking for recent cockups that will have a HUGE impact - loss of farm buildings capital allowences and general farm capital grants.

But the biggest:

Combination of Competition Comission being such pussies to let there be one UK AN manufacutor and allowing the super markets to trample us; farmer owner co-ops being next to useless; and demise of free school milk.

DEFRA,MAFF,GOVERMENT

Farm assurance.

why do we need it when we are still inspected by Defra, trading standards and our own Vets, which is done for free.

I was thinking of the time I didn't check the hitch and had a 40 foot trailer of straw go backwards down the hill at a queue of cars, but every-one else is looking at a bigger picture, so I'll go for the decline of large scale co-operation. Whether it be the end of marketing boards, the decline of livestock markets or county shows and the like. I'm a member of a farmers co-op and the mentality of competition spoils it, everyone wants to make more out of it than everyone else and will happily backstab their way through life. Forums like this are a step forward, but really a drop in the ocean compared with the apparent lack of 'for the greater good' any more. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I realise this has always existed to a certain extent, and the big noises who made their mark made it at the expence of others, but I seems to be an almost universal attitude now, societies fault I know, not limited to agriculture, but it can't help the industry in the long term.

Hunting ban - what a waste of time....has anything significantly changed? Cant police it, wont police it...may be one or two convictions i think but thats probably about it!

 EU regulations, especially regarding eartags. Tagging suckler calves with a proud mother breathing down your neck is never sensible, one tag is bad enough but two is suicide! Not to mention trying to tag a 5 year old beef animal who has lost it's tag for the umpteenth time and it barely fits in the crush....assuming you can persuade it to go in the crush in the first place!

And don't get me started on sheep.....! 

straw burning cost more to control weed prob with chems 20p for box of matchs

This was emailed to us by Mike Giffin:

farm assurance is  a load of twaddle. it costs us a lot of money, hassle and worry, and the end users import foreign, unassured  grain with impunity.

The guy who thought it up should be shot( maitland mackie).

I remember the late peter hepworth speaking up against it at cereals in the nineties , but nobody had the guts to back him up. myself included.

The greatest farming cock-up was for farmers to be too successfull and produce more food than was needed. We lost the advantage in the 'supply and demand' balence and have subseqently being selling our produce for under the cost of production.

 

If this Country was still hungary, would we have seen all the problems that have been encountered over the last 20 years?

Cattle wouldn't off been slaughtered for the miniscule risk of BSE; the scrapie scheme and burial ban would not of been dreamed up ; foot and mouth would of been controlled quickly and efficiently, Beckett wouldn't of messed with the subsidy schemes; farm assurance would be unheard of; people wouldn't be worried over the Edwina Curry egg fiasco and badgers would be less popular than cattle in controlling TB.

 

Maybe we only have ourselves to blame!

if the goverment didnt import so much food we would be ok,But they would sooner help other countrys rather than their own.We didt bring it upon our selfs.

Wooly:

If this Country was still hungary, would we have seen all the problems that have been encountered over the last 20 years?

This was emailed in by Paul Haskins of Faringdon in Oxon.

All of the obvious blunders of inept bureaucracy or mismanaged animal disease have a common denominator in the virtual abolition of commonsense from our society.

The words “government “ and “incompetence” have become welded together to the extent that we respond to each failure with resignation, rather than shock. The bankers have demonstrated how this lunacy dominates the “upper echelons” of our society.

The greatest failure from the agricultural industry is that we have not fought as guardians of commonsense. A dichotomy in our society stems from the Industrial Revolution. Rural society continued a “Jack of all trades” approach to life.  Even today, on a typical mixed farm, workers will have a range of skills equivalent to dozens of urban workers put together (however brilliant a combine driver you are, you need something to do for the other 11 months of the year). In his book “Wealth of Nations”, Adam Smith demonstrated how successful the division of labour could be in a factory without foreseeing how equally spectacular the cock-ups could be when specialists took over the management.

Our education system bludgeons children into choosing specialist subjects at an early age. This can lead to academic brilliance but the same schools make little effort to produce the polymaths required to manage these specialists. It is so common now for us practical peasants to be left scratching our heads in wonder as we see people with all sorts of academic qualifications, in positions of power, acting so stupidly.  Specialisation is the arch enemy of commonsense.

In farming we have failed the whole of society by relinquishing the reins of the countryside to incompetent urban specialists. Often their principal weapon is jargon.  I believe an intelligent person can convey almost any concept in simple language. If somebody communicates with me in language I cannot understand, then I know that they are up to no good. The present government, whose policies towards rural England are at best described as “irrationally genocidal”, are especially characterised by their jargon and Orwellian distortion of truth through their abuse of language (i.e. five year old grass is not “permanent pasture” and never has been!).

Agriculture should have had the self-confidence to stand its ground against the epidemic of silliness doing our country more harm than Foot & Mouth, BSE, TB and Blue Tongue put together.

Our legislators are now in disrepute, therefore law is in disrepute. We will not have a decent and just society until commonsense is the supreme law. Our greatest blunder has been not to recognise this.

Tim.Relf:

If somebody communicates with me in language I cannot understand, then I know that they are up to no good.

Brilliant.

Now the mirror test.

When I talk with a farmer does he/she use language I understand? Sow/Boar, Gimmers, IPU, OSR, hectares, acres, pigs/per/sow/year, John Deere 2140, Lexicon, spray, chemical, pesticide, RPA, Defra, and there are so many more. Forunately, I know these examples of jargon in farming in Britain, and so I am not excluded from the converstion.

There was a great retailer who said: 'Keep It Simple, Stupid'(kiss in jargon).