Self-reliance and planning key to industry’s future
An indication of scientific insanity is to keep repeating the same experiment expecting to get a different result. It applies elsewhere and if Prime Minister Theresa May and Brexit negotiations come to mind that is no surprise.
As months and years have passed it has become increasingly difficult to admire her stubbornness and refusal to accept defeat and instead think of the advice of American actor and comedian WC Fields: “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”
We also have to remember that May claims cricketer Geoffrey Boycott as one of her inspirations.
Hmm. Boycott scored a lot of runs, usually slowly, was brave and determined, but noted as one of the most selfish batsmen in history.
May’s approach to teamwork or refusal to listen to anyone else probably does follow the Boycott style.
So on and on Brexit goes. Like toothache, we try to ignore or forget, but it’s always there, day after day, page after page, false dawn after false dawn, warning after warning. As it was at the Oxford farming conference a few weeks ago, as it was at the NFU Scotland annual meeting last week, as it might be to the end of time.
Sorry, forgot, there’s a final vote this week that will sort it out at last, isn’t there? All disparate views in Parliament will see sense and accept that they have to vote for May’s plan – I use the word loosely – in the national interest. Farmers and the food industry can then all calm
down and plan for the future.
Sorry, again, carried away there by a touch of hysteria and an overdose of anti-depressants. What farmers and businesses of all kinds have to do is plan for no deal and it will be every man, and woman, for themselves. Forget subsidies and trade deals, or lack of them, and plan to be as technically and managerially excellent as possible.
As always, that is not a line the NFU can take. Its leadership cannot suggest as a partial answer that many of its members should be better at their job. A random example came recently from a survey by the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board indicating that of 448,000 prime beef cattle only 55 per cent met market specifications – that is, supply what the market wants. Failure to meet specifications meant penalties of up to £200 per animal.
A smaller random example was the calf health/ mortality study by Livestock Health Scotland with the SRUC. The optimum target for beef calves reared per cow mated is 95 per cent. The study of 1,822 cows in 14 North-east Scotland herds found the actual figure achieved was 89 per cent.
There was a wide range of performance in the 14 herds. Looking at the figures, at least two should not be in business. But the
NFU can’t say that when it argues for financial support of farming to continue and the perils of no-deal Brexit.
Without claiming prescience I have argued many times that the NFU, and other farming organisations, always looking on the gloomy side sits awkwardly with demands to get new entrants into farming and farming itself as a dynamic industry with a future. Who would want to join such a basket-case?
The answer is, of course, that the best farmers make profits under any system and that keen youngsters ignore the preachers of misery. Such as David Mitchell, a young farmer in a family-run beef and sheep business near Biggar.
A finalist in the Scottish young farmer of the year competition, he told the Scottish Farmer: “I don’t see what all the fuss with Brexit is about. If you know your business and you’re hard working then you’ll get by.”
He said a recent NFU video in which union president Andrew Mccornick predicted misery for farming “was a shocking message”.
Well, hurrah for that. Brexit, in whatever shape or form it finally takes, will not be easy for farmers. But optimism, planning and self-reliance seem the best approach for an industry that surely has a future when we all have to eat.