British farmers are treated with contempt by an ignorant elite
The only surprise about the farmers’ protest in London on Monday was that it hadn’t happened sooner. Indeed, pundits who blame conspiracy theories for misleading farmers into revolt are wide of the mark. There’s a deep-seated frustration right across the British countryside that’s coming out now, with UK farmers having far more to complain about than those in other European countries. No French government would dare take its farmers for granted or marginalise their rural minorities in the way that successive British governments have.
The headline complaints of the protesters – first, that it is becoming unprofitable to produce food in Britain and, second, that some foreign products are unfairly able to use British flags in packaging – are entirely reasonable.
The Government’s plan is effectively to remove subsidies and replace them with environmental payments, which inevitably means growing less food. It might sound inoffensive but it doesn’t add up on farmers’ projected profit and loss accounts, as everyone in the industry has been saying. As for labelling, we farmers have been complaining about this for years to no avail.
Yes, this is partly about broken Brexit promises. We were told that farmers would be no worse off but we patently are. I am no protectionist; as a dairy farmer, I relish the opportunities to sell British cheese around the world. But the version of free trade deals we’ve been given is not one that Adam Smith would have endorsed.
He believed in a level playing field. Free trade should also be fair trade. We don’t have that now for all sorts of reasons, partly British environmental standards, partly animal health ones. For example, beef from other continents does not seem to have the traceability demanded by our own expensive system of individually-tagged animals and record-keeping. And we have to pay to have fallen stock removed rather than simply burying it on the farm, as some other countries do.
It was always going to be a challenge shifting from protectionism to free trade. We simply don’t have the economies of scale they have in some countries. For example, New Zealand made a success of subsidy removal, partly by their farmers amalgamating farms to create share farming enterprises of optimal size, around three times bigger than British ones. But with our rigid system of tenancies we don’t have the flexibility needed to get there.
Ironically, politicians of all parties have been making it harder by legally entrenching tenancies and perpetuating small, inefficient farms. If they are not prepared to go on subsidising them, they will have to put up with a politically painful transition, accompanied by bankruptcies.
When you combine all this with incessant bureaucracy, the creeping spread of restrictive national parks, the ban on hunting, and an irrational policy of protecting badgers, there has been an all-out war on farmers for some time.
The response this week was to slowly and peacefully drive through the streets of London, politely reminding Westminster that rural people still exist. But in this election year, their anxiety isn’t going to go away. They will believe “pro-farming” politicians only when they see laws changed.