Opinion: SFI debacle highlights agenda to ‘kill off’ agriculture
© GNP I hate to tell you I told you so, but I said right from the start SFI was a waste of time.
I was saying this back when I was contributing Farmer Focus articles to the Livestock section – and now it has reached farcical proportions, with who gets accepted to the scheme basically decided by who can hit the “enter” button fastest on their computer.
See also: Opinion – we need more ‘bums on seats’, not more robots
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If I didn’t know any better, I would say it is the government’s way of systematically killing off British agriculture and that includes both sides of the “uni-party”, as both Labour and the Conservatives seem to have had the same agenda for the past decade.
The government encourages farmers to take land out of production, promises payments which are, in effect, income-foregone, then caps the payments, so what crumbs are left are oversubscribed, playing into the hands of global corporates, ready to snap up land for renewable energy, development or data centres thereby reducing the nation’s ability to feed itself.
There’s got to be a better way to support agriculture globally. Most developed countries are in the same boat, with no targeted approach to provide outcomes that actually benefit agriculture, with over/under production in one country and total complacency in another.
In the US, farmers have just received an $8bn “assistance” package, because every bushel they produce is sold at or less than the cost of production. Do I think the aid package will help?
No, the only beneficiaries ultimately are going to be the corporate machinery manufacturers, ag chem and the banks, and so the cycle begins again.
What’s the answer? Well that’s difficult because farmers are exceptionally good at what they do, probably too good because as soon as the market has an upswing, say for instance the milk price peaks, we all “pile in”, put more cows on, more feed, more work and depress the price and end up back where we started.
SFI isn’t the answer, and I’ll give an example why. You get paid £45 not to apply insecticide but the best science coming from the AHDB says you will lose £95/ha if you carry out this measure.
Nature on the cheap doesn’t work, there’s going to be no uptake. Industry-led “green” schemes foisted upon us by supermarkets offering a small premium don’t work if they are trying to indoctrinate you into becoming less efficient.
There’s a reason why we have big fields and big iron – the number one criteria for the consumer is price.
The FETF grant scheme worked fairly well. You set your stall out in advance, chose the equipment you required, tendered your paperwork in an orderly fashion on a given date and waited to see if you’re successful.
If I was to make one tweak, why does it have to be so tech-focused? The demand showed a simple cattle crush is more needed than a robotic bottling plant.
The phrase “public money for public goods” gets bandied about a lot, but in the form we have this “assistance”, the one key driver, food production, has been forgotten about.
The government is sleepwalking into a disaster of its own making.
We have been told we have a 1,000 days to prepare for war and they have seen sense with the opening of the Jackdaw gas fields, but now home-grown food production needs to be at the top of the agenda.