Opinion: Brexit has dealt my business a punishing blow

One of the most moving passages that I ever read in a novel is from Slaughterhouse Five where Kurt Vonnegut describes emerging from a bunker into the bombed remains of Dresden where he was held as a prisoner of war. 

Looking at the political situation in the UK brings that scene to my mind for some reason.

A Farmers Weekly poll suggested that more than 70% of farmers were not in favour of remaining in the EU.

They are now, no doubt, celebrating their liberty and looking at the scorched earth in front of us with enthusiasm and excitement.

Matthew Naylor is the managing director of Naylor Flowers, a South Lincolnshire business that grows cut flowers and potatoes for supermarkets. Matthew is a Nuffield scholar.

Perhaps, had they been early witnesses to the burning remains of Dresden’s historic architecture, they would have regarded that as a massive and thrilling opportunity to rebuild a prosperous future too. 

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I have rather less optimism in my belly.

As an employer of migrant labour, an exporter of significant volumes of British produce to the EU and a net contributor to the exchequer, my business has been dealt a punishing blow.  

I don’t know where the electorate think the UK will sell the 45% of its exports that were previously sold to the EU.

I don’t know who they think will harvest their fruit and vegetables. I don’t know what they think this has done to our international reputation.  

I despair at the situation and I pity the next generation for the burden that this wretched decision places upon them.

Crying fits

In between my uncontrollable crying fits, I try to find chinks of optimism amid the uncertainty.

The CAP was unquestionably flawed and so the British countryside could eventually be better off without it.

UK agriculture, in a very broad analysis, is divided into loss-making blackgrass growers in the East and loss-making milk protestors in the West.

Everybody is miserable. Land is unaffordable. The chemicals don’t work anymore. Animals have become meat machines.

The recent CAP reform all but gave up on biodiversity. A large percentage of the UK population is fat and unhealthy.

Probably it is OK to wave goodbye to the policy which delivered this situation and to build a new future for agriculture. 

Funeral

Does it matter if the 30,000 least-profitable farms in Britain go bankrupt without their Basic Farm Payment?

Most of them voted to be put out of their misery, after all. Probably they would like us to wear bright colours for the funeral.

I am now praying that the devolved administrations of the UK grasp the opportunity to create a farming policy which takes account of our food and energy needs and our natural strengths.

I sincerely hope our new leaders don’t take the lazy and easy decision to repatriate the same policy of area-based farm payments.

It would be the easiest system to implement and the NFU will almost certainly argue for it, but we need a much braver policy than that. 

Big Bang

The right farming policy could be the Big Bang that delivers the same market-driven style that characterises agriculture in New Zealand.

We deserve a system of support payments which make it much easier for good farm businesses to succeed and much harder for bad farm businesses to survive.

In the short term, we must brace ourselves for choppy waters and hope our new cabinet ministers are able to negotiate trade agreements which retain our export markets.

The farming industry might be the turkey that voted for Christmas but the EU is the one with the sage and onion.