Editor’s View: Up horn, down corn likely outcome in EU deal
© Adobe Stock We may be less than two months from the government’s most consequential bundle of decisions relating to agriculture for this parliament.
The way Westminster’s negotiations with the EU pan out over dynamic alignment on rules and regulations pertaining to crops and livestock look set to have far-reaching consequences for all sectors.
Defra has allocated more than 500 staff to work on the process, but talks with the EU are being conducted in total secrecy with no significant leaks or hints on progress.
See also: The pros and cons for farming of closer EU alignment
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It is clear from our analysis piece this week that the likely outcome is a net positive for the livestock sectors and negative for the arable sector, notwithstanding the possible reopening of seed potato exports.
That is mostly because livestock exports have been hardest hit with additional costs and red tape entangling what was previously a free and easy flow of trade when we were inside the EU’s single market.
Yet in selling the deal, the problem for the government is that livestock farmers have felt somewhat insulated from the impact of a lower tonnage of exports leaving these shores by rising global prices for meat and dairy in much of the post-Brexit period.
Arable, on the other hand – apart from a boom year in 2022 – has spent much of the time lurching from one crisis to another and feels unequipped to absorb poorer yields and higher costs arising from any withdrawal of crop protection products.
The prospect of crops currently in the ground being ruled unsaleable even here in the UK – as they have been grown with chemicals subsequently deemed illegal – would be particularly humiliating.
So far, so normal for any trade deal, a bureaucrat may say from their comfortable office seat.
Providing there is a net benefit to the agricultural sector as a whole, or perhaps the economy at large, then some pain in the form of trade-offs must be reluctantly accepted.
But this will be of little comfort to those a long way from Whitehall who have to bear the pain, particularly when Defra is refusing to say if it has even conducted an impact assessment to assess precisely how much pain will be felt and where.
And as seems to be the case with a lot of thorny problems currently, Sir Keir Starmer finds himself in a weak position when representing the UK on the world stage.
The prime minister has clearly communicated his desire to get a deal done, and quickly. Not what you would do if selling a used car, let alone closing a bilateral agreement.
One of the UK’s few good cards is the threat of imposing additional reciprocal inspections on EU goods flowing this way, were an agreement not to be reached.
Yet even this lacks credibility given the desultory way so-called preparations for that were conducted under previous administrations.
There are still shades between an acceptable exchange of trade-offs and something worse.
The role that Defra plays here in providing advice to negotiators and 10 Downing Street about the costs and benefits is pivotal.
It is to be hoped it rises to the occasion and is listened to.