NFU sub or fertiliser bill – you choose

I HAVE seen NFU presidents come and go for more decades than I care to count, each one promising more than their predecessor, each one almost unfailingly ending up delivering less.

Which brings us to the current situation, where the cracks have become simply far too wide to continue papering over.

There is a £6.5 million hole in the accounts forecast by 2027 – a yawning gulf which the NFU can only hope to bridge by attracting many new members, having lost nearly 600 subscribers in the year to October 2021.

I leave it to you to calculate precisely how many membership subs it would require to make good the deficit, but whatever the figure turns out to be, I will tell you this: it is unattainable.

Because so little has it achieved at such a pivotal moment for British farming that no-one in their right mind is going to give it more money (a commodity in exceedingly short supply in the farming world at the moment, let’s not forget).

And even the die-hards who have faithfully kept up their membership in the hope that things would improve are now deciding there are many more worthwhile demands on their cash supply, with it thought likely that subscriptions could rise by 7 per cent.

The warnings have been issued: unless that funding gap can be closed then the axe will be taken to large parts of the NFU’s structure.

Costs of both staff and establishments will have to be ruthlessly hacked back – and in fact the process has already started.

The entire edifice, in other words, is crumbling – not that this has stopped the president occupying an entire page in one of the Sunday papers to voice her opinions on the two prime ministerial candidates.

What has become abundantly clear is that the NFU has repeatedly failed its members.

There have been plenty of fine words. There have been repeated assurances of its power to influence and bring about change for the better based on the fact that it represents such a large sector of the farming community.

But when money gets tight and people have to choose between an NFU sub and a fertiliser bill they start looking for the achievements – and discover they are as real as the emperor’s new clothes.

Farmers are still at the mercy of processors and retailers. Prices – despite the occasional, positive flurry in the meat market – are still shockingly, historically low.

People are still getting out of the industry because the only alternative is to stay in and lose even more money.

And this week it has emerged that – contrary to what the NFU asserted it was going to achieve – there are no cast-iron safeguards in our new trade deals with New Zealand and Australia to stop them sending us meat produced to far lower – and therefore cheaper – welfare standards than our own.

Another failure, in other words, to chalk up on the wall at Stoneleigh – assuming there is any space left.

No wonder the members are throwing in the towel. No wonder they have had enough of an organisation which has promised so much and achieved so little. It’s just a shame for them that it has taken them this long to realise.

Unless that gap can be closed then the axe will be taken to large parts of the NFU’s structure