Management update from our arable producer contributors

“Thank you for continuing to hold – your call is progressing through the queue and an operator will be with you very shortly.”

Like many farmers, the elation of actually managing to get through to the RPA customer helpline is soon tempered by their perverse sense of humour. Very shortly turns into just over 20 minutes and by the time you speak to another human, you”ve nearly forgotten why you rang. Having said that, the advice given to me has been helpful.

It does, however, confirm to me, with the greatest of respect to the hard-working staff of the RPA and DEFRA, the task before them will not be delivered to their customers in a satisfactory manner.

I don”t want to look like I”m taking an easy swipe at the departments, but I have a fear that the single payment application forms have too many mistakes, the maps we are working from are not definitive copies, and the computer system used to mastermind the whole operation is not up to the job.

Continuing on a non-practical farming theme (there isn”t much time for practical work at the moment), the recent disclosure of CAP payments did not quite cause the fuss I anticipated. This can be explained, I believe, by the size of support received by non-farming companies through export subsidies and the lack of public interest in this type of information. Government is catering to the whims of a small minority of society; most requests have come from journalists and non-governmental organisations.

That is typical of the government”s attitude to the industry – it seems crazed on pressuring us from every angle. Another example is the Secretary of State”s recent correspondence about sugar reform, which shoots down every point made in support of the sugar industry.

mark.ireland@farming.co.uk