Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Farmers need to be sure of support
The Conservative MP for Bridgwater and West Somerset Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Farming Minister George Eustice that with farmers already planning their operations for next year they need to be absolutely sure of continuing state support once the Brexit plug is pulled
DEAR George Given the turbulent times in which we live I suppose it’s inevitable that people will take their eye off the ball sometimes.
But I need to register with you my strongest possible concerns about the way the interests of our farming industry have been conveniently kicked into the ditch while we all obsess about Brexit and how we extricate ourselves from a particularly challenging political impasse.
Life, George, goes on much as normal out beyond the M25. Farmers are still working – in many cases seven days a week – to produce food to put on the nation’s table, though I imagine the upcoming festivities will represent, as usual, one of the few points in the year when your average family pauses to reflect on where its food comes from and offer some silent thanks to those responsible.
But you know as well as I George that farming isn’t a day-to-day business.
Cropping plans have to be prepared several seasons in advance, livestock acquired in correct numbers and at the right time and budgets prepared accordingly.
But as far as many farmers are concerned they are driving a tractor towards a brick wall as represented by next March with little or no idea of what awaits them on the far side.
Totally unacceptable. While a lot of excitement is being generated about an Environment Bill and the opportunities it will offer to green up farming policies I am alarmingly hearing less and less emphasis placed on spelling out the details of the policy framework which will enable farmers to go about their primary business of producing food once we are sailing our own ship once more.
George. The time has come to accept the inevitability that in a cutthroat, price-cutting market supermarkets are never going to raise their prices to suppliers out of some sense of sympathy – as one particularly naive buffoon from the NFU once seriously suggested they would when production subsidies were scrapped.
Farmers, to spell it out, are going to need to be supported at least in the foreseeable future if not beyond and consumers absolutely need to have it explained to them that that modest proportion of their tax that is devoted to subsidising farmers is offset by the historically low prices they benefit from at the check-out. And all this information needs to be got out there pdq so that farmers have the necessary confidence to get on with their forward planning; so that we can secure the future for one of the world’s most efficient farming sectors (employing, let me emphasis more people than car manufacturing and aerospace combined); and that we can be sure of preventing our highly cherished countryside from reverting to some kind of ghastly, neglected wilderness.
Yours ever
Ian