Opinion: Big ag uses its power to exploit farmers

Most of us are familiar with Del Boy’s “no money back, no guarantee” mantra, but don’t you feel like that’s where we’re at?

The march of capitalism in farming over the past 20 years has resulted in a miserable world of watching your back and being exploited by “big ag”.

See also: Opinion – big won’t be beautiful in the tough years ahead

As suppliers have spent more on fancy offices and showrooms, nicer company cars, more downtime for meetings about meetings, we are bearing the cost.

Coupled with more waste, tighter margins all round and increased emissions targets and legislation costs that get pushed down the line, it leaves us farmers – the microbusinesses in all this – to bear the brunt of these costs and at times shoddy goods.

In one calendar year we had a lorry load of unfit fertiliser, a load of diseased seed, a crop contract default, some contaminated seed, a company changing their terms mid-contract, and two environmental scheme contracts torn up.

The total direct value of these in cash terms was about £135,000, but when you consider all the knock-on effects to the crops grown from the seed, the downtime of staff and machines, interest and professional fees, the total was closer to £650,000.

However you look at it, it’s more than a small business can stand.

Some companies are far better than others at admitting fault when it’s clear.

Some of these examples were solved speedily and satisfactorily, others we’re still fighting.

I dread to think of the time spent by each of us trying to get these things addressed, and the temptation is to give up.

But if we all let these things slide then it becomes a new depth the industry can claim is “standard”.

Some contracts are fairer than others.

We know that in the past we have signed contracts that basically say “we, the customer, have all the rights and you, the supplier, have none”, but for a business with tight margins the promise of a little extra revenue is too tempting to turn down.

As we have fewer and larger businesses to work with, the temptation of big firms is to drown our small businesses in cost, delay and paperwork when they wish to preserve their margin at the cost of ours.

They know full well the cost versus reward for individual farmers is often a sufficient barrier for action, so they either offer scraps to placate us or play the time game.

And of course, whenever we report an issue we’re told “no one else has mentioned anything”, and it’s very hard to achieve disclosure to find out if this is true or not.

I often talk of the benefits of working together more, and this is the most obvious. We all encounter these issues and probably all resolve them differently.

Many of these things we aren’t insured for, and legal industry standards often no longer exist to protect us.

NFU membership may help a little, but there are restrictions and, with so few active farmers now members, it’s not the answer – plus there are conflicts of interest where both parties are insured with the Mutual or with companies they partner with.

In other countries there are cheap insurances you can take out that cover machinery breakdowns, ombudsmen you can turn to, or industry bodies with teeth, prepared to be unpopular with “the industry”.

Perhaps it is time someone launched a farm-style Trustpilot.