Why there will be no surge in exports

SOMETIMES you have to admire the sheer professionalism of our elected leaders. No – not the ones at Westminster on whose performance the voters delivered such a sobering judgment this week.

I’m referring instead to those who set themselves up as leaders of the farming industry even though the NFU only represents a relatively modest proportion of all those involved in farming in this country.

The latest announcement from the Blessed Minette has been delivered in the last few days.

Having failed to persuade HM Government to rein back on the tapering of direct support payments, having failed to stop ministers being dispatched to all corners of the earth to tie up shady, shoddy little import deals which are going to flood the

UK with cheap and inferior farm produce and knock the financial legs away from hundreds of members, she has now launched a face-saving initiative: we are going to export our produce until the cows come home.

To the extent that a whole 10-point ‘export plan’ has been drawn up. In essence we are going to go out there in world markets with all guns blazing, see off the opposition, grab territory for ourselves, see to it that our dairy industry becomes a dominant force on the international stage. Ensure that even if the British public is going to be fed fifth-rate imported beef with the consistency of a saddle then at least dinner tables all over the globe will be groaning with succulent cuts of the finest, grass-reared British beef.

How, precisely this Promised Land is to be reached I am not too sure, because as far as the dairy sector goes we do not possess the capacity to process all the litreage that is currently produced here, let alone fulfil major export contracts.

And the same, unfortunately, goes for the meat sector, with its problems compounded by the absence of East European labour to staff the abattoirs.

What we have is a creaking processing sector which just about manages to keep up with domestic supply.

Yet those of us who have been pointing out for years that the historic lack of investment is going to hinder future expansion have been shouted down.

It must be all of 20 years ago that the late Derek Mead set off on a factfinding tour to inspect the dairy industries in Australia and New Zealand and made some startling discoveries.

He saw how both countries were investing heavily in modernising and expanding their processing sectors and improving their marketing with an eye to growing demand in Asia and elsewhere, and generally keeping not one but two steps ahead of the game.

Yet when he came back and, as an NFU delegate, tried to issue a warning that unless the UK followed suit at some point not only should we be left disastrously behind but at the mercy of being elbowed out of world markets by those nations which had seen the future and acted accordingly he was shouted down.

The fact that he possessed more sound business sense than the accumulated total of all those sitting at the same table counted for nothing: he was telling the NFU something it didn’t want to hear.

Sadly there won’t be any export surge. Because not only do we lack the capacity to mount one, there is not enough money – thanks to the constant downward pressure on retail prices – in either sector to invest and provide more.

And it’s pointless looking to investment from a Government. As recent events have demonstrated it only pays lip service to supporting British farmers while continuing to tighten the financial screw on them and strike deals which will fill the shelves with affordable but inferior food other countries have produced for us.