Opinion: Support system shambles could almost be a conspiracy

I always thought that propagating conspiracy theories was a pastime for the gullible, solipsists and simple-minded.

Believing in an all-powerful sinister masterplan is nuts, when most governments and large organisations struggle to change a lightbulb on time and under budget.

But then I met a conspiracy theorist down the pub and he told me that’s what I’d been conditioned to think by the mainstream media.

See also: Opinion – teaching will be good, for me and the students

About the author

Sam Walker

Farmers Weekly opinion writer

Sam is a first-generation tenant farmer running a 120ha (300-acre) organic arable and beef farm on the Jurassic Coast of East Devon. He has a BSc from Harper Adams and previous jobs have included farm management in Gloucestershire and Cambridgeshire and overseas development work in Papua New Guinea and Zimbabwe. He is a trustee of FWAG South West and his landlords, Clinton Devon Estate, ran an ELM trial in which he was closely involved, along with fellow tenants.

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So I borrowed his tinfoil hat for 20 minutes and had a think about farming.

So – and humour me here – let’s imagine you wanted a conspiracy theory to completely cock up any form of farm support.

I suspect this is how a Machiavellian evil genius might go about it:

First, while the old Basic Payment Scheme system was far from perfect, at least it existed and – by and large – worked. So let’s scrap that.

Now – more fiendish yet – let’s lull farmers into a false sense of security by giving them a few years to make plans based around how we’ve said we’ll slowly phase it out.

And then randomly abolish it midway through this timescale.

In its place we’ll make something up on the hoof that is so facile and pointless a bunch of primary schoolkids could have done better. Let’s call it SFI 2022.

To make it look like we’ve done a bit more than consult Timmy, aged four, from the reception class, let’s spend a load of time and money on some largely meaningless “tests and trials” so we can get people to research things and give us their opinions… and then ignore them.

Got it? No, keep up, we’ll sign a few up to our scheme then randomly cancel it in favour of something else. Let’s call it SFI 2023.

It’s got some massive holes in it but what the hell, we’ll serve it up half-baked because we’re loving this process.

Damn, those pesky farmers are applying for it, that’ll never do. Some have even spotted the glaring cracks we’re desperately trying to fill as we go along.

Got to move fast here, let’s scrap SFI 2023 and make a newer and more complicated version. And change all the option codes, just to keep them guessing.

If those gormless peasants have any patience left to apply, don’t worry, we’ve overcomplicated it so much they’ll have to spend all their cash on advisers to interpret it for them.

Drat, they’re still applying. Whoops. Let’s randomly cancel any more applications and tell them it’s a massive victory for our environmental policy and we’re the most supportive government ever.

We’ll vaguely promise them a new scheme coming later and – get this – a new computer system to replace the one that currently works.

It could not be possible to make this much of a mess of things without trying, could it?