These rural businesses backbone of economy

There’s an air of grim determination in the small and family farm sector as the challenge of rising input costs looms large. All the more reason, Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey, why the Gove

DEAR Thérèse, It’s about this time of the year when daylight hours are getting fewer and the weather is distinctly dank – if not, mercifully, actually cold – that my thoughts turn more than usual to the state of affairs on our smaller family farms.

My feelings are a mixture of admiration for the spirit of those who go out in all weathers and at all hours to keep the business running and genuine concern for how long they are going to be able to continue tightening their belts in order to remain doing so.

Only farmers would be prepared to work the hours and put up with the conditions in return for so little by way of return. And when I read, as I did recently, that fewer than 20 per cent of family farms are now turning a profit, those worries are merely heightened.

We should not be surprised by such statistics because smaller family farms have always been disadvantaged. They can’t use economies of scale to mitigate their running costs and even the EU failed to weight its support mechanism to favour them, as it should have.

The sector’s economic decline is, indeed, hard to grasp. There is a tenanted farm within my constituency which used to support five families, engaged on nothing but farming. Now it can barely support one even after all kinds of ancillary activities such as B&B and direct selling have been bolted on.

Of course, it has been accepted for years that other income streams – usually from one or other of the partners

working off the farm – are necessary. But I have been considerably heartened by the activities of the Prince’s Farm Resilience Programme which aims to help 300 family farms a year to review their current activity and identify improvements and opportunities that can be made onfarm. Pooling of expertise and knowledge and a move towards cooperation also help and I am particularly delighted with the successes achieved by the Exmoor hill farming network on my own patch.

But I cannot stress enough that the Government must do whatever it can

to support our smaller family farms which punch far above their perceivable weight. When you combine the advantages they offer – healthy meat from grass-fed sheep and cattle, pastures acting as carbon stores, free management of some of our most spectacular and well-visited landscapes – it becomes abundantly clear that they make a massive economic contribution, even though it’s not universally recognised.

The one grouse I always had with the Common Agricultural Policy was that there was so little room for manoeuvre or to tailor support to

local circumstances so that a familyrun livestock farm in a picturesque West Country setting was regarded in the same light as an enterprise running 20 goats on an arid Greek island.

Now we are able to fine-tune farming policies I would urge you, therefore, to do whatever you can to help improve the lot of these businesses which really are the backbone of the UK’s farming economy and whose loss would be nothing short of utterly devastating for the countryside. Yours ever,

Ian

Sheep farming on a misty winter morning at Machine Cross, Helebridge, in Exmoor National Park