Just have a listen to this amazing interview of Robert Goodwill (ex-DEFRA minister (though not for very long)), farmer and Conservative MP for Scarborough and Whitby, by Charlotte Smith, on BBC Radio 4 Farming today this morning. I had to have an extra Digestive biscuit with my tea to recover from it (click here, 9 mins in).
Sir Robert wants to go back to lump sum hand-outs to farmers, not on the basis of need or ability, but on the basis of… err… being farmers. Sir Robert is a farmer, did I mention that?
The basis for this seems to be that:
- much farming is so inefficient that farmers need the money – tell that to key workers across the land
- the price of wheat is so high that some farmers will be able to make a fortune without going into environmental schemes – surely an argument for ELMS not for blanket hand-outs
- Sir Robert, and his fellow farmers find it difficult to fill in forms to get public money so they’d rather (what a surprise) get the money without having to do the paperwork – I do sympathise (not at all) as I have to fill in a form, called a tax return, to hand over my money to the state so why should Sir Robert and others have to fill in another form to get my money? How outrageous an imposition! By the way, Sir Robert, you’ve been in power for over 12 years – they are your forms! Sort it out if you don’t like them.
- More marginal farms need the money to stay afloat – ie we, the nurses, the teaching assistants, the impecunious authors are paying for inefficient farms to remain as inefficient farms by propping them up with non-conditional handouts. Might Sir Robert be part of the Anti Growth Coalition?
- farms will go out of business and be abandoned – Sir Robert doesn’t believe in the market, or at least he doesn’t believe that it should apply to farmers perhaps (did I say that Sir Robert is a farmer, and a former DEFRA minister?). I think Sir Robert might be neglecting the rather novel idea that someone might buy a defunct farm. If he is saying, which surely he isn’t, that an upland farm has no market value then why is he asking me and all other taxpayers to invest £10kpa in it?
This is simply a plea for handouts to farmers. For any other industry or sector I reckon Sir Robert would be talking about standing on their own two feet, modernising, getting rid of restrictive practices, becoming more efficient and letting the market reign. But not when it applies to your mates, and yourself.
The solution to the issues in farming is to have public support given for the delivery of public goods. If this government is going to move away from that then let’s give large chunks of DEFRA’s money back to The Treasury where it can be allocated between arms for Ukraine and decent wages for key workers.
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Do these people even listen to themselves? Someone should make a transcript, change the references to another industry, present it to them as Labour policy, and ask them what they think of it. They’d condemn it out of hand and be revealed for the hypocrites they are.
It is blindingly obvious that we need farms. We need to to eat. It is arguable that we need different types of farms to take account of differences in topography, climate, soil, water table and, perhaps most importantly, to provide the variety of foods that we need and crave. However, there is one type of farm we don’t need and which taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to support. And that is the run-down, dog and stick type which limps along simply because of the value of the land is larger than than the owner’s overdraft. The value of the land, despite it being unproductive by any rational analysis, is artificially inflated by the area payments which have guaranteed an income for decades.
A flat payment to small farms simply for existing will perpetuate this travesty and, importantly, divert funds from supporting environmental and other public goods – the very thing that ELMS was designed to support. Of course, it might be that this payment is a form of Universal Basic Income. Let’s call it that and let’s here why it can’t be introduced for the rest of the populous.
Actually, over 10 years ago the Exmoor NP Officer told me that the average Exmoor farm was getting £30k pa, not £10, and if you look at Defra’s own figures this is not only the farmers income but actually pays quite a lot of the costs of the failing farming. The farmer would be better off if he did nothing.
But there are fellow travellers with this sort of rubbish – far too many, including most of mainstream conservation, seem to have swallowed the food security myth. It really rocked me back to read letters in conservation publications that Knepp wildlands really should be farmed. We could feed ourselves tomorrow – if we didn’t feed half our grain to animals. On top of that we are now using 2m tonnes of grain for carbon super-inefficient biofuels and the whole of the Less Favoured Areas produce just 5% of our food. Basically, food security applies only if farmers don’t like the alternative. You’ll hunt long and hard to find food security mentioned if a farmer wants to build a solar farm or a housing estate.
The good news should be that for the £3.2 billion farm subsidy budget there is no doubt whatsoever that we could easily reverse the decline in terrestrial biodiversity and at the same time farmers could make a living.
The bad news is that both farming and mainstream conservation have badly mis-played their hand an regardless of Sir Robert a big chunk of money is going to quietly leave the countryside, sucked into the ever deepening economic hole of Truss-o-nomics.
Well said!!!
Given how keen he is for farmers to receive free money it is interesting (but depressingly unsurprising) to see that he takes a rather different view with respect to the payment of benefits to welfare recipients.
Definitely not a case of ‘Goodwill to all mankind’.
(https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/11804/robert_goodwill/scarborough_and_whitby/votes) .
Jonathan – well spotted
Why do the British (English?) electorate vote for this crap?
A thousand years of breeding by the upper classes to produce peasants that reflexively tug the forelock.
And a lack of spine in the peasantry to have a proper rebellion. Too much worshipping at the altar of civility and reasonableness.
Thanks Mark!! What a tremendous breath of fresh air to read what so many people are thinking, but not expressing. It’s all about the maximum income for the very least effort – sod that habitat creation, anti flooding stuff, and all that form filling is tedious and needs to be streamlined! It’s naked greed, selfishness and opportunism. All the more infuriating because the perpetrators loudly proclaim a form of victimhood to pre-empt and suppress the scrutiny and open public debate that’s desperately needed to determine how land and our money is to be used. I wish it was mandatory that every article, TV feature, radio program and debate on farming in this country began with stating up to 40% of our food gets wasted.
If food security is really at risk it’s from the same mentality that’s crippling conservation. If selling farmland to developers, having fields full of solar panels is an easier and more lucrative option than growing food concerns about the need to feed people conveniently vanish. When I directly encountered the ‘poor’ crofting community nearly thirteen years ago the terrible realisation came those who get most political support, public sympathy and government subsidy are not those who deserve it, but those who apply emotional blackmail, who plead poverty when they have shiny new SUVs, four bedroom ‘crofts’ and hardwood conservatories while having not a shred of empathy for anybody or anything else. Ever since then I’ve taken every pronouncement about how any farmer is struggling with a massive pinch of salt.
For years the conservation movement has been trying to save wildlife while accommodating rather than challenge the propaganda and victim posturing. The results have been pretty pathetic and usually reversible. The NGOs need to change their tack, things could hardly be any worse than they already are, but could be an awful lot better. Farmers have become sacred cows and that’s not good, least of all for the ones that are genuine conservationists – the exceptions that prove the rule otherwise why aren’t the NFU pointing out outstanding ones like Tom Bowser of Argaty Red Kites and Chris Jones of the Cornwall Beaver Project?