Starter for an agricultural policy

Pete does agriculture...
Are the cows coming or going home?

As you probably know, I warmed considerably to the SDP during the election, but that was by finding my way to overlooking their horror show of an agriculture policy. The more you research the subject, the more it looks to have been inspired by anti-farming environmental groups masquerading as farming advocates. Slagging a policy off, however, is far easier than writing one. 

To that end, I've written a sketch of one, to which I will add greater detail later down the line. It centres on the premise that farms are fundamentally food growing businesses, and all other considerations are secondary. So here goes...

The grim reality for farmers in Britain is that farming is barely viable. For many farmers, though, farming is a way of life, and one that adds to the richness of the landscape – which is essential to the wellbeing and prosperity of the country. Every effort must be made to make farming worth it again. In line with our national resilience ethos, Britain’s farmers will come first. 

In order to support farming (an energy intensive industry), we will work to reboot fertiliser production in the UK, and through nuclear renewal will bring electricity overheads down - which will also stimulate greenhouse farms using cutting edge agribotics – not least to reduce reliance on cheap foreign labour and imports. 

A research fund will be created to make Britain the agriculture research and development lab of the world with farmers taking a share of intellectual property rights.

The fashionable urbanite view is that pesticides, fertilisers and antibiotics should be phased out of farming but pigs and poultry, particularly, would collapse without antibiotics, and arable would not survive without nitrates. The Party recognises that, in reality, there is no British agriculture without them. 

The anti-pesticide/fertiliser lobby is a very well-funded NGO blob made up almost entirely of climate activists. Increasingly we find sustainable farming advocates are anti-farming climate zealots. As with energy, a full public inquiry will be held into the extent of green lobbying by domestic and foreign "philanthropists" who will then be blacklisted from all policy and parliamentary consultations. The Party opposes the decommissioning of agricultural lands for environmental and energy purposes. 

Agriculture has found a renewed place in national discourse thanks to the television programme Clarkson’s Farm. While it offers a fascinating insight into the bureaucratic hurdles of modern farming, it is a depiction of farming in the Cotswolds rather than a true depiction of what it’s like for cash poor farmers in remote areas with little diversification prospects. For them, even modest environmental requirements make the difference whether their farms turn a profit or not. Farmers do not have lucrative television deals to subsidise experimentation.

We do, however, see the utility in promoting conscientious land husbandry, and it is certainly the case that farmers can play an important role in flood prevention. As such, the beneficiary of their work is the insurance sector. We would therefore explore tax incentives for insurance companies to offer flood prevention grants, inviting land owners to bid for the work.

As to pollution from farming, there are already strict anti-pollution laws in place to prevent run-off - including the retained nitrates directive. What is missing is adequate and intelligent local authority enforcement - but there is also room for targeted grants to assist farmers with compliance. Both of these functions should fully be devolved to local authorities but with DEFRA inspection. 

When it comes to livestock rearing, due to economies of scale, the British meat industry can never compete on price but we can compete on quality and reliability. For the purposes of animal welfare, sustainability and food safety, we will dismantle the EU veterinary system in favour of smaller, local slaughterhouses under local authority supervision. Falling numbers of small, local abattoirs are forcing some farm businesses to call it a day, as finding alternative outlets for finished livestock pushes up costs and journey times.

Some animals from remoter areas are now travelling more than 200 miles to slaughter, while many farmers report that remaining smaller abattoirs are increasingly busy and difficult to book into. Slaughter house owners cite the regulatory burden in their decision to cease operation. The system is in need of modernisations and regulatory streamlining. More detail will be given. 

Supermarkets

Supermarkets must take some of the blame of the collapse of British agriculture. The report, Unpicking Food Prices, shows that farmers enjoy little or even zero share of any profit – typically just 0.03% of the retail price. By comparison, processors were found to be receiving 10 times the profit yet debates on farm policy, which put environmental aims at the forefront of targets, largely ignore how the money is divvied up in supply chains. Even doubling farmer profits from the retail price would not have a noticeable impact on the cost to consumers. 

The Party believes, in line with Sustain recommendations, that a stronger Groceries Code Adjudicator is needed, with greater powers to act when any unfairness between large-scale buyers and individual farm business is found. 

The Groceries Code Adjudicator (the GCA) was established on 25 June 2013 by the Groceries Code Adjudicator Act 2013 and is responsible for enforcing the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (the Code). The GCA is funded by a levy on designated retailers with a UK annual groceries turnover of more than £1 billion.

The adjudicator should be backed by new supply chain rules on fair deals, with codes for each sector and an enforcement body, as provided for in the Agriculture Act 2020. Further rules should be introduced to improve transparency in supply chains to ensure farmers have greater bargaining power when negotiating prices. Provision for this is, again, set out in the Agriculture Act. Clear food labelling would provide greater clarity across the whole cycle of food production. Public procurement models should be established to secure more produce from a large range of farmers and growers, allowing small businesses to feed into public sector food contracts for schools, hospitals, and other institutions.

A lack of transparency throughout the food supply chain means that the poor returns for farmers is being overlooked by policymakers. This could be remedied by two key recommendations:

• The percentage of the retail price received by farmers has been removed from Defra’s annual report Agriculture in the UK. Reinstating the percentage would help shed light on how small businesses are being excluded from potential profit

• The reporting requirements of larger businesses should be reviewed to ensure enough detail is being provided on where money flows within the food system

Meanwhile, schemes such as quality marks such as Red Tractor impose ever more stringent requirements. This has worsened with the onset of stringent environmental requirements which supermarkets use towards their carbon offsetting quotas, essentially exploiting farmers as free labour. The Party will end this by abolishing all state mandated carbon offsetting. 
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Please let me know if I missed anything important. There's a lot more to be said on this issue, I'm sure.

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