TALKING POINT
TALKING POINT
There is, I am unreliably informed, a car wash somewhere off Londons Fulham Road which, for an extra quid, will spray mud onto your four-wheel-drive. For these customers, autumn is a time of mists and muddy fruitfulness. But for the rest of us October isnt quite so picturesque.
After a lousy harvest and a wet back-end I am now watching the price of wheat fall like an autumn leaf. It is also the time the bank manager (now called my relationship manager) comes for lunch. After discussing the weather, I present him with my budget which shows what my overdraft will be for the next 12 months. Lunch this year was no fun at all. My overdraft will rise by about 25%.
Which is why I am looking for ways of saving money or, better still, not spending money. Three events have concentrated my brain wonderfully. The first was the arrival of a letter from the NFU inviting me to pay my annual subscription of nearly £2000. The second was a cheque from a local merchant for 27t of rape from which he had deducted £17.55 as my Home-Grown Cereals Authority levy. And the third was a cheque for 100t of wheat from which £40 has also gone to the same charity.
The NFU, for all its faults, is still a necessity and not a luxury for the farmers of Britain. Life without the NFU would be unthinkable. Which is why I shall once again, with heavy heart, write out a cheque and give it to my group secretary.
But the HGCA is a very different matter. For the past four years as cereal prices plummeted, the levy has remained constant. As a result the organisation receives about £12m a year from farmers like me. Quite what it does with this money remains a bit of a mystery. Not because the HGCA is in any way secretive, but simply because I never seem to notice the benefits I am supposed to receive. Yes I know that without the HGCA there would be no Recommended List, which costs £2m/year, and that would make me rather sad. But all the other research and development it finances at a cost of £4m/year seems to pass me by. So also does the £1m it spends on market information. And as for British Cereals Exports and British Cereals Products, I remain unmoved and unenthusiastic.
So in the HGCA we have an organisation that first, forces me to give it money. Second, never consults me about how it is spent. Third, refuses to link the levy to the market price of cereals and fourth spends my money on projects which are, at best, questionable. All of which drives me to the conclusion that in these difficult times HGCA is a luxury and not a necessity.
The best solution would be to abolish it completely. The landscape of Britain today is littered with the skeletons of organisations (Railtrack being the latest) which have failed their customers. However, if this is felt to be too drastic a solution, then let the HGCA levy become voluntary. Those farmers who wish to benefit from the research programmes will continue to pay and will continue to receive the so-called benefits. In that way the HGCA would enter the real world and find out very soon whether or not the farmers of Britain feel that they are getting value for money.
Meanwhile, I have to grit my teeth and smile every time a lorry leaves the yard and takes with it £11 which will wine and dine a Portuguese flour miller.
All of which drives me to the conclusion that in these difficult times HGCA is a luxury and not a necessity. The best solution would be to abolish it. The landscape of Britain today is littered with the skeletons of organisations…which have failed their customers.
Some cheques are
signed ungrudgingly
and other payments
are strongly resented.
Into the latter category
comes the HGCAlevy,
says Oliver Walston