THE YORKSHIRE AGENDA ON: COUNTRY LIFE
RURAL COMMUNITIES simply have to be at the forefront of political thinking in the run up to and beyond June 8.
These are unprecedented times for farming – the countryside’s heartbeat – as the industry looks ahead to a future that isn’t ruled and regulated by the European Union’s ‘one-sizefits-all’ Common Agricultural Policy.
Many in farming relish the opportunity afforded by Brexit but what will it mean for the annual £1bn-plus package of direct support from Europe for British farmers?
So far politicians of all persuasions have done little to reassure rural communities that there is a coherent plan for farming outside of the EU. There has been no outlining of a vision for the industry from Ministers, with the publication of a 25-year food and farming plan repeatedly delayed.
Farmers and rural businesses need a government that champions their contribution to the landscape and the economy, that provides the policy framework that enables them to flourish through better connectivity, sympathetic planning rules and access to labour and international markets. Domestically, farming leaders have called for a groceries code adjudicator with more powers to hold food processors and retailers to account and ensure farmers are getting a fair deal at the farm gate.
They also demand a simple system of administration of farm payments that works and not one beset by crippling delays as overseen by the Government’s Rural Payments Agency in recent years.
Farming also needs a properly funded Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with the manpower and expertise to meet the huge challenge of repatriating agricultural and environmental policy from the EU.
Countryside communities need assurances their livelihoods and ways of life will be protected by the next government and that agriculture will not be an afterthought in the tough Brexit negotiations. A government that nurtures an industry that manages 71 per cent of land in Britain, that together with food manufacturing generates £108bn for the economy and in farming alone employs 475,000 people, is one rural communities crave.