opinion FARMING VERSUS THE ENVIRONMENT?


Back in April, according to DEFRA Secretary Michael Gove, it was expected that government plans for farming post-Brexit would be published in the second half of this year. Since then, the time frame has narrowed, with the likelihood that DEFRA is focusing on an autumn publishing date. In which direction should such a publication point UK agriculture? In January, Mr Gove said that the current system of farming


subsidies would be maintained until after the General Election scheduled to be held in 2022. This is not to say that there will be no changes after the UK formally leaves the EU, at 11 pm on Friday March 29, 2019. There are strong indications that Mr Gove is considering limiting the amount that very large farmers receive; as one commentator has observed, ‘There is no good reason for wealthy landowners to receive a very large subsidy just because they own a lot of land’. The alternative approaches are a maximum cap or a sliding scale of reductions. Farmers will receive payments for providing ‘public goods’, such as access to the countryside, planting woodland, boosting wildlife, improving water quality and recreating wildflower meadows. There will be no public objection to the idea of moving agricultural


policy in the UK towards the delivery of enhanced environmental goods. However, the livestock feed industry in particular and the agricultural supply in general will be keen to learn what government has in mind for agricultural production following the ending of the Brexit transition. So far, the debate has centred on the potential environmental pay-out. What is unclear is the direction of what we may term as food policy. How much of the UK’s food is going to be produced in the UK by British farmers? There is much background to this debate. According to recent


figures, the UK produces 61 per cent of the food eaten in this country. Occasionally, a higher figure of around 75 per cent is quoted but this excludes ‘non-indigenous’ items such as exotic fruits like bananas and mangoes or tea and coffee, foods that cannot be grown either at all or on a meaningful scale in the UK. However, recent data suggests that, if production of solely indigenous foods is considered, then UK self- sufficiency this area fell from 80 per cent in 1980 to the current level of 61 per cent and the National Farmers Union – which would admit to having a prominent interest in the debate – projects a self-sufficiency rate of indigenous food production of around 53 per cent in 2040. In terms of the strategic consequences of self-sufficiency, it is


instructive to note that this latest figure is comparatively high to that which characterised the eves of the First World War and Second


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World War, when we produced only around 33 per cent of our food, with the consequences that followed from the submarine war on British shipping in both wars. There was much wrong with the Common Agricultural Policy in


its early manifestation and this stemmed from the original debate of how agriculture should fit into the overall concept of the European Economic Community (EEC). The principal protagonists in the debate, France and Germany,


argued from opposing concepts of the part played by agriculture in their respective economies. France had a high proportion of its labour force engaged in agriculture and related economic activities whereas Germany was busy completing its post-war industrial reconstruction. It was a debate that France won, probably for some of the wrong reasons. In latter years, often at the instigation of the UK following its entry to the EEC in 1973, the more nonsensical aspects of the CAP such as minimum prices and the advent of the food mountains were reformed until the CAP assumed its current state at the turn of the century. It must be admitted that, reflecting the earlier development of the


CAP, there is much residual hostility to many of the central mechanisms of its current manifestation. Subsidies, in particular are a red rag to the bull for many people, particularly when they are paid to people who are already very wealthy. But, as frequently reported in this publication, it must also be borne in mind that the system of farm payments currently keeps many small and medium-sized farmers in business - and thereby make an important contribution of the health of the rural economy, not least by supporting its environmental stability. The decision would appear to lie between those who argue for a


system characterised by the trumpet call of ‘Free Trade Made Britain Great’, involving the abandonment of all measures of support for British agriculture and the sourcing of much of the UK’s food from wherever it can be procured most cheaply, and those who argue for the retention of a structure of agricultural support very closely analogous to that at present in being. This will be a debate which will involve not just the livestock feed


industry and its suppliers together with the whole of the agricultural supply trade, but also a much wider constituency of interests. There are a whole range of interests to ponder, not least security of supply. The effects on the rural economy overall must be reviewed, particularly as to how the current system of agricultural support impacts upon it. Although farmers and their suppliers have a primary interest in this question, the wider context must also be considered.


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