UK - Minister offers nothing new to farmers only rhetoric

26 Jan 2010

My upper lip hadn't quite curled itself into a sneer as I prepared to read Hilary Benn's Food 2030 strategy paper, but it would be fair to say that I was not expecting to be impressed.
The track record of Defra and its current Secretary of State is not such as to inspire much confidence in a Damascene conversion when it comes to the value of British agriculture's productive core.
The Press release which accompanied its publication seemed to confirm my worst fears. It was headed: "How consumers can help secure Britain's food supplies."
Not farmers, you will notice, but consumers. I could almost imagine the dreaded f-word being scratched out by some spin doctor at No 10.
Nor was the Prime Ministerial foreword any more encouraging. Gordon Brown informs us that the role for British food producers is to "reduce the impact they have on the environment, manage natural resources and bio-diversity even better and adapt to a changing climate". No mention at all of increasing production so as to reduce our dependence on increasingly scarce and expensive imports.
It reminded me of that notorious policy statement on hill farming, which listed all of things that hill farmers provide – landscape management, clean water, carbon sequestration, healthy livestock, community engagement, renewable energy – but failed entirely to mention the production of food.
But from that point onwards, it improves, starting at the unlikely point of Mr Benn's vision for the future: "Consumers are informed, can choose and afford healthy sustainable food. This demand is met by profitable, competitive, highly skilled and resilient farming, fishery and food businesses, supported by first-class research and development."
It might have been improved by the addition of the words "locally produced" in the reference to food, but that apart, it seems to me to be exactly what farmers have been waiting to hear, and especially in its use of that crucial adjective "profitable".
The section on food security also shows clear signs of a change of emphasis at the heart of government. In all previous policy statements on this subject, food security was expected to be guaranteed by free trade, enabling adequate food to be purchased from all sources, including British producers.
In this latest Benn vision, the order of priorities has been reversed.
He says: "Our food security is ensured through strong UK agriculture and food sectors and international trade links."
Our Secretary of State has often been urged to put farming first. Now, at last, he appears to have done so.
It is important to stress this is not a re-run of the 1975 White Paper "Food from our own Resources", still less of the 1947 Agriculture Act. There are no targets set for the production of particular commodities.
Instead, the paper uses the form of words employed by Mr Benn at last year's Oxford Farming Conference.
The aim should be to produce "as much food as possible, as long as it is responsive to demand and recognises the need to protect and enhance natural resources".
Market forces, reflected in market prices, will determine what that means in practice. At this stage, there is not the remotest chance the Government will intervene through the reintroduction of production subsidies or guaranteed prices, and that goes for the Opposition as well.
You couldn't put a cigarette paper between Hilary Benn and his Defra shadow, Nick Herbert, when it comes to the role of the Government. It will be confined to setting strategic goals, ensuring fair markets, fostering and funding research and development, sharing cost and responsibility with the industry for animal health, looking after the environmental dimension, pressing for international action on food security and, to quote Food 2030 again: "leading by example through public procurement and support for the industry".
The prominence that is given to research and development is particularly encouraging. That includes GMs, which are rightly assessed as having potential, while being no panacea. And nor is the vital importance of translating research into practice ignored.
Climate change inevitably looms large in the Government's thinking. The target set for English agriculture is to reduce CO2 emissions by three million tonnes by 2020, although how realistic that will be if the industry really is poised for expansion remains to be seen. But I was reassured by the statement that: "UK action on climate change should not result in food production and the associated greenhouse-gas emissions moving to other countries." The lessons taught by unilateral animal-welfare measures appear to have been learned.
I have to say that once I'd got past the Gordon Brown foreword, I could find very little in the paper with which to disagree. When it comes to the value of competitive, profitable, sustainable domestic food production, it really does appear to be a case of message received and understood.
So what might that mean for the man or woman in the farmyard? What difference to the fortunes of farming is Benn's endorsement likely to make? Very little directly or immediately, would be the honest answer. Market forces will still determine output prices and input costs; the EU will still control farm support policy, including the Single Farm Payment, and the regulatory agenda will remain as heavy a burden as ever. But what it ought to mean is that the next time some bright spark suggests a new raft of regulations, or the abandonment of a stretch of farmland to the sea, or a tax on fertilisers, or a change to the planning guidelines, the productive value of agriculture will be given its proper weight in the decision-making process. The last 20 years has seen that value denigrated or ignored, with grievous consequences for the industry's capacity and morale. It may take another 20 years to make good the damage.
Anthony Gibson is a freelance writer and may be contacted at anthony.gbsn@googlemail.com .

Source: westernmorningnews.co.uk

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