OPINION: Get over your survey aversion and be heard

There was an interesting poll on the FWi website the other week asking readers if they would consider responding to a DEFRA consultation on CAP reform.


If I remember rightly about 50% responded that they would and 50% said they would not. It did occur to my distracted mind that what this poll amounted to was a survey asking farmers if they would respond to a consultation, which is a form of a survey.


My hunch was that those not inclined to respond to surveys were less likely to respond to a survey asking if they would respond to a survey.


Despite my Marxist analysis (Groucho, not Karl) the poll inspired me to look up the DEFRA website and undertake the consultation exercise online. I will give DEFRA their due in that they made it user friendly, but nonetheless I found myself losing the will to live halfway through. After section four I found myself writing repeatedly “whatever helps increase UK farm production the most” as I ploughed on towards the final page.


When I saw the button on the screen that said “Submit?’ my nstinctive reaction was that it was asking me to “submit” as in “why don’t you give up now?” But then I realised I had actually got to the end and could now merrily submit my form. No doubt when it reached the other end some leading Defracrat hurriedly printed it off and rushed excitedly into the secretary of state’s office shouting “Mr Paterson! Mr Paterson! Good news, we’ve finally got Guy Smith’s views so we can now press on with implementing the CAP reform”.


Let’s face it, farmers are not natural survey responders. If there is a consultation going on out there then not many of us are fighting our way to the front so our opinions can be heard. Farmers instinctively would rather get on with the job of farming than undertake some paper exercise.


Form filling or attending consultation exercises is for most of us a bit like going to the doctor. We’re only going to do it if it’s clearly a matter of life or death. If it’s not, it can probably wait for another time when we are not so busy on the farm. Inevitably, that time never comes, as there is always another job to do.


Unfortunately, this reluctance is to our disadvantage. Like it or not, regimes that involve regulation or new CAP systems can prove our undoing if they are designed without much farming input.


And where farmers are loathe to tread, others with non-farming interests rush in. You would be amazed by the number of people and organisations who will reply to consultation exercises about issues affecting farming profitability, but wouldn’t know how to drive a tractor or herd a cow.


There are a multitude of armchair farmers out there ready to submit their views. For instance, members of the Braintree Farmers Club don’t respond to DEFRA surveys on the future look of the CAP, while members of the Braintree League Against Modern Agricultural Practices do.


As Woody Allen famously said, the world is run by those who can be bothered to turn up. So my plea to farmers is: Get your views known. Even if it’s just something simple such as “Have DEFRA thought through whether this proposal will increase or decrease UK farm production?” You suspect it’s a point they don’t hear often enough.


Guy Smith comes from a mixed family farm on the north-east Essex coast. The farm is officially recognised as the driest spot in the British Isles. Situated on the coast close to Clacton-on-sea, the business is well diversified with a golf course, shop, fishing lakes and airstrip 


More from our columnists


 

See more