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Farmers View 1st July 2009

My motives for making the switch from farming into a career in politics were many and varied but near the top of the list was the deep seated feeling that politicians were making a complete mess of the business I had spent twenty years trying to build up and that, if I couldn’t stop them from my position as a farmer, I would try to influence them from inside the political machine. I must also admit that, on occasion in recent years, I have had the odd malicious thought that I should try to enforce some of the ‘historic solutions’ in other policy areas and see how they like it! Maybe my chance will come but, with any luck, my mood may mellow.

The problem with politicians and the farming industry is that each can never be sure what the other wants and the relationship is one of perpetual change against a backdrop of an unstable landscape. Let me put it this way. Starvation is a bad thing and nobody will ever vote for a government that cannot ensure that its people are fed. Starvation in the developing world is also a bad thing for governments as this will cause ‘celebrities’ to become openly critical. The solution to this problem is more food.

Governments then think about how they can boost food production. Sometimes it will be suggested that the way ahead is to cut away regulation, stop micro managing the rural economy and let farmers do what they do best. Governments have always rejected this in favour of the time honoured solution of throwing more taxpayers money at the problem, partly because this is what our Farmers Unions, North and South of the border, ask them to do and, secondly, because this gives government the chance to do what it enjoys most; imposing regulation, micro managing the rural economy and making farmers do things which they would rather avoid.

As a result, production becomes skewed towards subsidy rather than consumption, surpluses and shortages ensue, huge areas of land are taken out of production and farmers become totally subsidy dependent. Then however, an increasingly well fed electorate begins to believe that farmers, who they think were always too well off in the first place, are economic parasites and the right thing for government to do is pull the rug out from under them in spectacular style. The government then does exactly that.

So, no doubt there will be plenty of people willing to disagree with me but that is my summary of what our successive governments have done to our industry over the last thirty-five years. Attitudes to farming and food production have turned full circle and we are right back where we started.

Never mind, the show goes on because, last month, the House of commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee published its report entitled ‘Securing food supplies up to 2050: the challenges for the UK’ in which it states that the UK has a ‘moral obligation’ to support food production and that we ‘can play a leading role’ in securing global food supplies up 2050, by when world food output will need to have doubled to meet demand.

The report calls for an ‘urgent increase’ of £100 million in spending on public sector food and farming research to tackle ‘existing weaknesses in the UK food system’ and urges the Government to ensure that the UK makes the most of its temperate climate and the natural advantages this gives us for producing food and urges government to provide clear leadership, and guidance on the nature and size of the challenge and concentrate on building capacity in the food and farming industries so that they can respond to market signals in ways that will reduce the risk of food shortages.

The report does not advocate food self-sufficiency for the UK but emphasises the importance of strong trading relationships with a variety of countries, calling for the focus Common Agricultural Policy reform to be on sustainable food production.

Introducing the report, Committee chairman Michael Jack pointed out that, in addressing this challenge government must ensure that the nation’s farmers have the support and resources they need to secure long-term sustainable increases in agricultural production, and he continued saying;

“If people go hungry then political stability goes out of the window. This is a key lesson that government must learn from last year’s food price hike when some countries ran short of food. What happened showed just how fine the line is between full supermarket shelves and empty stomachs.”

Oh dear. My personal message to a shell shocked farming industry can only be, “All aboard for another trip on the Magic Roundabout”