AND VILLAINS…
FARMHEROES
AND VILLAINS…
Who would you select as your food and farming hero of the past
100 years? Peter Grimshaw asked our readers and found a
wide variation of views in their replies
Stanley Sheasby, 60 years a farmworker: An employer and the mechanical hedge cutter.*
Hero: "I would like to choose the Adams family of Northampton farmers. Three generations of my family have worked for three generations of theirs. The Adamses have been very good to me. All the time I worked for them, I cant remember a cross word. When I applied for a job as a boy in 1938, Mr Adams offered me £1 10s (£1.50) – three times what I was paid by the dairy farmer.
"I had worked for since I was 13. A fortnight after I started three weeks trial, the boss said he was going to pay me an extra 10 shillings (50p). Thats the kind of people they are. They are very, very good farmers. I enjoyed my whole life there, and was still doing three half days a week when I was taken ill a few weeks ago."
Villain: "The mechanical hedge cutter crucifies a good hedge. Theres far too much topping goes on. Theyre just knocking the hedges off, year after year after year. Nothings laid, and all the bottoms going out of them. In time, theyll have no hedges at all. I think thats a shame. I like laying hedges, and I like to see them look right. These days, when they cut hedges, they smash them to bits."
*Sadly, Mr Sheasby passed away shortly after contributing to this article.
Ben Gill, NFU president and Humberside farmer: Lord Plumb and red tape.
Hero: "Lord Plumb, president of the NFU from 1970 to 1987, is a legend in his lifetime. Over four decades he has tirelessly represented the interests of farmers and rural communities with a common-sense approach that is so sadly lacking in political life today. This has allowed him uniquely to articulate the views of all in the industry in a persuasive way, at all levels of power, on a European and world stage."
Villain: "Red tape. Over the years, an increasing amount of bureaucracy has created a stranglehold on the farming industry. Paperwork and charges of all kinds are adversely affecting UK agricultures competitiveness, not only in the EU but worldwide. While animal welfare and food safety safeguards are important, the duplication and sheer complexity of the paperwork, coupled with the duplication of the inspections, are becoming intolerable."
Lord Plumb of Coleshill, Conservative MEP: Three visionaries and a scaremonger.
Heroes: "I see more than just one hero in the past 100 years. Namely, Lord Netherthorpe and Tom Williams created stability after World War II with the guarantees and deficiency payments in the 1947 Agriculture Act. At that time, the well-known technical adviser, Prof Sir James Scott Watson was a man with great vision, wisdom and experience, a unique character. And Watson & More was the standard textbook for all agricultural students and farmers."
Villain: "I believe that Prof Lacey, who claimed among many misleading interviews to be the leading authority on BSE and CJD, is a villain of recent times. His scaremongering both here and on German TV, telling us that some 500,000 people may be walking about with latent CJD, has done long-lasting damage to the beef industry and to many family farmers in particular."
Dr Franz Fischler, EU farm commissioner: Biologists and nationalism.
Hero: "My farming hero certainly lacks the charisma of other contenders. Hiding in grey laboratories and staying away from the headlines, the molecular biologist has nevertheless revolutionised agricultural production methods. Thanks to molecular biology we have learned to understand life better, we can breed new crops, fruits and vegetables and preserve old ones, to the benefit of farmers and consumers."
Villain: "Short-sighted nationalism has not only brought war, destruction and suffering over Europe, but protectionist trade policy has also hampered progress and prosperity in the farming sector. With the introduction of the CAP the European Union made a stand against nationalism in agriculture and substituted it by an approach of integration and co-operation among the member states."
Poul Christensen, Milk Marque: A pioneer and a protein.
Hero: "Rex Paterson. During the immediate post-Second World War years, Rex Paterson established a huge farming enterprise in southern England, later extending into Wales. His focus on simple, effective management and minimising costs and his appreciation that the difference between good and bad stockmanship was 1000 litres a cow was an inspiration to me and, I suspect, a generation of farmers."
Villain: "A certain prion protein and its close relation, the millennium bug. Both were the result of misguided attempts to cut corners and save short-term costs at massive expense, longer term. Lets hope we will shortly be rid of both."
Robert Forster, chief executive, National Beef Association: Education and a bug.
Hero: "The 1947 Education Act paved the way for the university, college and craft education of tens of thousands of farm children who would otherwise have endured a cramped desk in a single teacher school until they took up a career in turnip pulling, kitchen work or ditch-digging."
Villain: "The BSE bug – but which one? The prion which blighted the UK, or Prof Richard Lacey, who scaremongered on a European scale? Or the plotters in Brussels who seized their chance to imprison British beef? Or abattoir owners who ignored the 1989 SBO rules and extended our BSE sentence by five years?"
John Thorley, chief executive, the National Sheep Association: A farm minister and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Hero: "Tom Williams, farm minister in the post war period. He was responsible for the 1947 Agriculture Act, which brought stability into farming and benefited the country and consumers. This reduced food prices while paying farmers a fair return. The proportion of household income spent on food has fallen from 30% in 1947 to 10% today."
Villain: "Margaret Thatcher who, through negotiating the Fontainebleau Agreement which reduced the levy paid by the UK to the EU, reduced the amounts paid to British farmers compared with their European counterparts. This Thatcher influence has been the single most destabilising factor for British farming as it destroyed the level playing field."
Patrick Holden, director, Soil Association: A visionary and a corporation chief.
Hero: "The Prince of Wales, who had the courage, 10 years before organic farming became remotely fashionable, to embark on an ambitious plan to convert his entire estate at Highgrove to organic production. As one of the best-managed organic farms in Britain, Highgrove is now inspiring tens of thousands of visitors each year to take organic farming seriously."
Villain: "Bob Shapiro, chief executive of Monsanto. Although I havent met him, his company has epitomised the arrogance of late 20th century multinational corporate business culture by imposing its technology both on society and the natural world, without consulting the public or supporting the principle of consumer choice."
Prof John Marsh, economist: Scientists and agricultural support.
Hero: "The agricultural research community. In this century it has become possible to ensure that the food needs of all the worlds growing population can be met. That it could be realised has been made possible by the collaborative work of many researchers. This harnesses profit and altruism to achieve results which benefit all."
Villains: "Support systems which frustrate adjustment. The dumping and destruction of food makes people poorer and reduces the worlds capacity to support the human population. Good support systems help farmers produce food and environmental goods that are needed. In this century, too many existing policies have supported the myth that change could be avoided."
John Bailey, senior ADAS mechanisation consultant: An engineer and a machine.
Hero: "A C Howard, who started what became the Howard Rotovator Company in Essex in 1938, had pioneered the principle of power-driven cultivation since he built his first Rotovator in Australia in 1912. He recognised its efficiency compared with dragged implements. The firm went on to employ 3000 people, had 13 overseas subsidiaries, and sold machines in 150 countries. His inventive brain was legendary, always trying "to find a better way of doing it" and influencing power-driven cultivation equipment to this day."
Villain: "The green crop loader. In the 1950s these land wheel driven loaders were usually attached to the back of a large four-wheel trailer with hayracks to lift the loose swath of hay or silage on to the trailer. A vastly overworked person then loaded the trailer evenly and hopefully safely by hand. You just had to keep up whatever the loading rate or risk being buried. One can imagine the farmer driving the tractor and testing out the poor employee. How these people must have longed for the end of each swath or, better still, the end of the day!"
Grenville Welsh, chief executive, the British Pig Association: An MP and a businessman.
Hero: "Sir John Stratton, former chairman of the erstwhile Fatstock Marketing Corporation. For his vision in establishing a national, farmer-owned pig processing operation, which was equivalent to the food chain approach about which so much is heard today. He acquired the then largest group of pig processing factories and went on to persuade the government of his day of the importance of the bacon and ham curing sector, leading to the introduction of the bacon stabilisation scheme."
Villain: "Former farm minister the Rt Hon John Gummer, MP, for bad judgment, weakness and total disregard of UK pig farmers in allowing the Richard Body Private Members Bill banning sow stalls and tethers to become law. Adopting it as a government regulation destroyed the UKs competitiveness. Also for attempting to filch producers money from the residual Aujeszkys Disease Fund."
Baroness Young of Old Scone, chairman, English Nature: A conservationist and the CAP.
Hero: "Few post-war conservationists recognised the dominant influence of farming on wildlife as Norman Moore did. His pioneering work on hedgerows, FWAG and pesticides established ecology as one of the foundations of sustainable agriculture. Prof Moore inspired a generation of farmers and scientists to find practical solutions which could be effective for both farming and wildlife."
Villain: "If once a hero, the CAPs sell-by date expired years ago. Its recent history has been a thoroughly ignominious one. Its byzantinely complex mechanisms and outdated philosophy work against farmers and consumers interests. It has an abysmal environmental track record. If you described it to a Martian, he wouldnt believe that such a con trick could be perpetrated. We should enter the next century intent on reforming it, root and branch."
Richard Fenwick, cereals specialist, NIAB: The elements
Hero and villain: "In the past 100 years the weather has proved both hero and villain. Hero, because it has allowed the full potential of agricultural advances to be expressed and, on occasions, has reversed the most pessimistic predictions of farm profits. Villain, because it has been responsible for ruining the plans and dreams of many farmers, and turned many a silk purse into a sows ear.
"The weather remains an obsession for most people involved in agriculture and is likely to remain a hero and villain for the next hundred years… unless man learns to control it, which I hope never happens." *