Peter Gittins: You can’t regulate what you don’t understand

“Clueless civil servants sent to farms to learn how they work,” was the headline in the national media.

It refers to Defra’s new Baseline Agricultural Training programme – a four-year contract with a value of £650,000, intended to give civil servants practical insight into how British farms operate.

But that is the maximum contract value over four years, not a lump sum already spent. In the context of an agricultural budget running into the billions, it is not a dramatic commitment.

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About the author

Peter Gittins

Dr Peter Gittins is an academic at Leeds University from a Yorkshire upland farming background. He specialises in rural entrepreneurship, farm strategy, and socio-political issues affecting agriculture.

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Even so, reaction has been divided.

One view is blunt. This is a waste of taxpayers’ money. If someone cannot tell a sheep from a goat, they should not be shaping agricultural policy.

Some argue that only those from farming backgrounds should hold such roles.

For others, the very idea that civil servants need farm “training” is seen as patronising, given the authority they already have in designing policies that affect farmers.

I understand the frustration. Recent policy has not always felt grounded in practical reality.

There have been comments suggesting that civil servants ought to understand farming already. But insisting that every civil servant must have been a farmer is not a serious solution.

You would not demand that an airline pilot previously worked serving drinks on the trolley in order to understand passengers. Different roles require different expertise.

That said, it helps when civil servants spend time on the ground and see how decisions play out in real businesses.

Expecting them to come from farming backgrounds is unrealistic. Expecting them to develop practical understanding is not.

This programme will not fix every disconnect between government and the countryside.

But giving civil servants structured time on farms is a step towards narrowing that gap. If it leads to more grounded decision-making, then it has real value.

Better policy starts with better understanding.