Farmers’ grievances are much bigger than Brexit
Big Farmer is on the march to Westminster, or rather the roll across northern Europe, fuelled by grievances about protecting livelihoods.
While SW1 is usually treated to the dulcet tones of Steve Bray, Gaza protests or Waspi women, it has this week played host to a steady array of colourful tractors with Union Jacks blaring out the Wurzels’ “I’ve Got a Brand New Combine Harvester”.
Under the banners of “stop substandard imports” (which ones and which standards goes unclarified) lurks an old stand-off between free traders and farmers, town and country.
How far does agribusiness have to adjust to market conditions and consumer preferences – and how far should government intervene?
If you incline to the “it’s all Brexit’s fault” school of thought here, then look away now. This is more symptom than cause: Brexit robbed farming of some Common Agricultural Policy-related subsidies, and created headaches for those exporting across the Irish Sea. But the real beef for many on this motorised march is that free-trade food deals have been on the rise for far longer than Brexit has existed.
Supermarkets have long borne down on the cost, making the outlook for all but large-scale farming increasingly poor – especially for meat farmers. Many more people limit their meat intake for health and environmental reasons. Pig World – required reading if you want to know more in gory detail about where your weekend fry-up comes from and at what price – reports: “Throughputs remain very suppressed. Estimated GB slaughterings for the week ended 16 March dropped back by nearly 6,000 on the previous week… 34,000 below the 2022 figure.”
Farmers are the ultimate protectionist industry and one where switching output is often an unappealing or impractical thought to those (including my own extended family of dairy producers in the North West) furious at seeing livelihoods whittled away by cut-throat pricing. Their answer tends to be to fight imports, with all the enthusiasm of the 19th-century protectionists in the Corn Laws feud.
But is this about farmers as a trade union, defending the interests of diffuse members (crop farmers do not have many interests in common with animal farm folk)? Or is it about the new buzzword of “food security”? Shortages can be addressed by simplifying border inspection regimes for agriproducts or more deals with politically friendly countries – but slicker ways of importing foreign food are hardly the bumper-sticker message here.
In truth, the Big Farmer movement is based on a problem which haunts the Government in the UK. It is a variant of the same headache which has haunted Emmanuel Macron. The French leader has ditched an entire Mercosur trade deal to appease French farmers – denting his globalising reputation to dial down unrest at home.
Brussels has larger and noisier farmer protests (trust me on this, since the tractors churn up the street outside my hotel on my monthly visits to the EU capital). They are currently objecting to the EU Directive on Unfair Trading Practices, which does not address the additional costs of heavier environmental legislation.
The unifying truth is that farming in the UK and European models relies on subsidies.
In short, few farmers are happy and most rely on handouts, whether these come through the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, which favoured paying farmers not to use some of their land, or through schemes like a plan to replace subsidies for sheep farmers.
It means farmers are at the sharp end of spending decisions in times of tight public budgets – and consumers who buy Danish bacon and Australian beef.
Countryside farmers will say with some justification that Westminster turns a deaf ear or shunts their problems to the endless formfilling world of the Department of Agriculture. The main parties can shuffle the incentives and pick a few favourite areas of electoral significance to take the edge off a hard problem. But the Big Farmer problem is about a lot more than Brexit – another reason why the tractors will keep showing up in a capital close to you.
Farming in the UK and European models relies on subsidies