Opinion: Farming doesn’t need more rescuing, but less to rescue

Look at what we fund and applaud in this industry: subsidies that prop up businesses that aren’t profitable, brilliant mental health support for farmers who’ve reached crisis point, and arbitration once a landlord or buyer relationship has broken down.

Every one of them is help that arrives after the damage is done. It all matters, given the current state of the industry, because somebody needs to be there when things go wrong.

The real question is why are we so much better at rescuing people than at stopping them needing rescuing in the first place?

Take mental health. We’ve built brilliant crisis support, and it has saved lives, but the same investment in stopping farmers reaching crisis point, in the earlier conversations about workload and identity, is thin on the ground by comparison.

And regardless of the investment, the number of people in the industry who choose to engage with this stuff is even less.

See also: Opinion – mental health issues need empathy not appeasement 

The money is more complicated, and it isn’t only the farmer’s to carry. Funding exists, in part, to keep businesses going that the market alone wouldn’t, and a fair chunk of that gap starts beyond the farm gate, in supermarkets built on cheap food and shoppers trained to expect it.

But funding still only treats a symptom, because alongside that unfair market there is often a plan never written, a succession conversation nobody wanted to start or change that’s ignored because “That won’t work here”.

A cheque papers over both for a while, but we all know which bit is in our control.

Arbitration follows a similar shape. Asking someone else to referee once you and your landlord can’t sort it out yourselves is good to have, but better not to need.

Most of those breakdowns didn’t happen on the day of the falling-out, they happened months earlier, in a conversation that should have taken place and didn’t, or did and went badly.

This is a carrot-and-stick problem. Our industry and its organisations respond brilliantly to the stick, arguing hard against a tax change or a scheme closure once it’s landed, but invest far less in building what is within farming’s own control, so that fewer of those fights are needed.

The same shows up in us as individuals, waiting to be forced into change rather than learning the skills to see it coming while we still have a choice.

Taking control isn’t only something to ask of the unions, it’s a choice every farmer and business makes, or avoids, long before the crisis arrives.

None of this is about farmers being weak or farms being badly run, or letting the rest of the supply chain off the hook. Iit’s about where we’ve all chosen to invest both our money and our choices.

Crisis response is easier to fund than prevention, since you can point at who got saved, and prevention rarely makes a headline.

So, here’s the question for anyone with a budget, a platform, a vote at the AGM, or a choice in front of them.

What would it look like to spend even a fraction of what we spend on rescue – in time and choice, as well as cash – on the skills and conversations that mean fewer people need rescuing at all?

That’s the harder option, but it’s the only version where we use our own power, instead of waiting for someone else to force our hand.