Radical approach needed to provide productivity boost

Comment Brian Henderson

It’s been on a million times before but the Father Ted Christmas special was one of the must-watch programmes over the festive season.

It’s more than 20 years since it first hit our screens but the comedy seems ageless. One of the side-splitters is when Ted hears of his “Golden Cleric” award then pesters Mrs Doyle for her honest opinion on whether he’s the best priest – only to throw a massive sulk after she tells him he might be “the second best priest”.

Sadly, this scene was brought to mind as I thumbed my way through the most recent offering from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board’s fast- expanding library of Horizon documents which analyse aspects of our industry as Brexit approaches.

Focusing on the gains in productivity that the industry has clocked up over recent years, the news wasn’t good for UK farmers in this most recent publication.

In fact, if being the second best priest was enough to make Ted sulk for hours, we could probably take the dorts for several months, such was the inadequacy of our performance.

For, while rates of productivity growth have slowed around the world over the last two decades, UK farming has been falling behind our competitors. While we’ve averaged 0.9 per cent a year, the Netherlands have clocked up 3.5 per cent and the Americans have managed 3.2.

To make matters worse, France and Germany are also well ahead – as might be many other unmentioned

0 The Father Ted Christmas special seems ageless nations. Indeed, if I read the coloured graph properly, UK farming has come pretty close to flatlining since the mid-1990s.

The report points out that to view “productivity” as covering only how much we produce would be a basic error, for it is more to do with how efficiently we use land, labour and other inputs – and the effects we are having on the environment.

But how do you drive improvements in productivity?

On a macro level, Michael Gove’s speech to the Oxford Conference indicated that the common agricultural policy had stifled innovation in the industry. But despite offering to extend payments until 2024, a removal of support from the production side – and letting the harsh winds of economic forces play – seemed to be his main answer to driving productivity gains.

At individual business level, however, new ideas, skills and technology will play a key role – and with the AHDB report highlighting that fewer than a third of UK farmers have any formal training under their belts we could certainly up our game on that front.

The extension services that have traditionally offered encouragement, help and advice also have a wider role to play in promoting innovation. And while the UK spends as much on “blue-sky” research as other countries, the science doesn’t seem to be filtering down to where it should be used.

In the old days “the college” was the one-stop shop for go-ahead farmers looking to put new ideas into practice.

However, we now have a fragmented service and the jumble of advisory bodies, assurance scheme operators, educational establishments, research centres and levy organisations that fulfil this role tend to create more confusion than help ( just think SRUC/QMS/AHDB/SQC and the many other poor score contenders in the current game of advisory Scrabble.

But, encouragingly, the AHDB report asks if it – and the plethora of organisations serving the industry – could offer a more streamlined service: “Could we overhaul our fragmented and disjointed innovation and skills pipeline to drive change? If key stakeholders were to join forces and align behind the productivity challenge, could we together kickstart a seismic shift in long-term productivity growth for the good of our environment, consumers and sustainability of the industry?”

And, answering in a style which would have had Obama voters everywhere on their feet, it concludes: “Our analysis here suggests, united, we could.”

However, only time will tell if the importance of driving innovation – and moving UK farmers back into the premier league of productivity gains – will be enough to rationalise all the little empires that have been built up by these establishments over the years.