DAVID RICHARDSON
DAVID RICHARDSON
Wheat yields are about
the only thing to be
cheerful in a politically
hostile and
uncaring climate
I keep trying to find things to build up my optimism. Like the fact that, on this farm, we seem to be getting yields of wheat rather better than we feared, despite the dreadful weather through the year. Like the modest and faltering firming of market prices for cereals which may mean we can factor in values in the low £80/t rather than the mid-£70s as previously expected. If we get a sustained period of dry harvest weather and can avoid using the diesel-fuelled grain drier, we might break even on some fields.
But I am constantly reminded of the political context in which farmers have to work. And that kills any optimism that may begin to flicker into life.
The other day, for example, I was driving the combine and listening to the news on Radio 4 while the regular driver had his lunch, when Lord Larry Whitty was interviewed about the future of agriculture. I always used to associate the name Larry with a lamb which featured on childrens radio programmes when I was a child. DEFRAs Larry has a similar voice to the lamb in question, but thats as far as the comparison goes. I suspect he is a wolf in sheeps clothing, appointed to soften up farmings lambs for slaughter.
Again he repeated the mantra that the vast sums of government money pumped into farming every year have got to stop. Farmers must rely on market forces because direct payments are blunt and ineffective instruments by which to manage the industry, he added.
If ever there were a blunt instrument it is market forces as currently applied to UK farming. Our industry is subjected to intolerable and unsustainable injustices by an over-valued currency reducing farmers returns by 30%. The same overvalued currency makes it more attractive for retailers to import food than to purchase it from domestic producers. It suffers under a costly regulatory regime to which most of our competitors are exempt. And it is administered by a government whose actions and words indicate it would like to eliminate as many farmers as possible because they are too much trouble.
Through all of this it is implied that farmers have brought these problems on themselves. Foot-and-mouth, swine fever, BSE and other calamities are farmers own fault because of the way they responded to CAP. We should stop whingeing and get on with adjusting to the inevitable future. There is sometimes a mention that there might be a little more aid for environmental work and diversification but that, it is suggested, should only go to small-scale farmers. Big farmers dont need it and should not expect it. Meanwhile, unaware, presumably, of the contradiction in their words, our political masters recommend we get bigger to cash in on the economies of scale.
So, are farmers to blame for their own plight? Readers of this column will give a predictable answer. But independent viewers of the 4×4 programme on Channel 4 television the other night will have made up their own minds. The programme showed a vast warehouse at Heathrow Airport full of suspected illegal imports. There were pictures of rotting meat from exotic parts of the world falling out of cases and admissions by the one man in charge of checking it all that there was no way he could do an adequate job. Moreover, one of the airport managers claimed he had written to former farm minister Nick Brown long before the outbreak of F&M in February, warning him of the undermanning and inadequate checking of such packages at the airport. He had specifically told MAFF that he feared something like F&M might get into Britain via such packages. He has not yet received a reply. And still they try to blame farmers for the epidemic.
It is the deliberate, constant and usually unjustified criticism by government officials that is most debilitating to people who are already struggling financially. One of its indirect results is the disastrous fall in numbers of agricultural students attending colleges and universities. Young people who might normally have registered for a farm management course read such comments, as we all do, and are put off by the poor prospects they indicate. Plenty choose, instead of agriculture, environmental sciences, rural development, flower arranging, and so. The number of pure agriculture students at many establishments can be counted on your fingers.
Have Lord Whitty, Margaret Beckett or Tony Blair considered the implications? I doubt it. But if it continues it will amount to the loss to agriculture of a generation of young people. For few young farmworkers are joining the industry either.
Come the next food shortage – and come it will – this country could find itself without the skills necessary to rebuild food production. Think of coal. Do you believe the UK coal industry could be redeveloped with the limited specialist skills that remain? I suggest it could not and after a few more years of the current treatment, the same will apply to farming.