This week is the Royal Cornwall
Show. I have many childhood memories of the Royal Cornwall Show. When I was
growing up my father was one of the many volunteer stewards who gave up his
time each year to make the event possible, with an early start at 5 am for days
in a row to get to the show and manage the gates before any of the traffic
started to arrive. For many years we used to show our South Devon Cattle there.
My brother will be there again this year with the family's prize winning Lop
Eared Pigs, which is a rare breed native to Cornwall.
After a difficult winter and a
very late spring, I know farmers have been running to catch up in recent weeks.
Arable farmers have been working around the clock drilling crops. Livestock
farmers have been working to finally turn their cattle out to grass, which will
come as a relief to those who struggled with shortages of fodder at the end of
winter.
On top of all of this, the
deadline for submitting applications for this year’s Basic Payment Scheme
passed in the middle of May with the customary good timing required under EU
law. With all of these pressures on time, it is therefore impressive so many
individual farmers found the time to make their own submission to our recent
consultation on the future of agriculture policy in the UK. In total, more than
44,000 responses were received in just 10 weeks.
When you have an opportunity for
great change, it is always important to receive lots of individual
perspectives, because it is often where the most innovative ideas are to be
found. A number of farmers have told me in recent weeks they thought the paper
focused too much on the environment and not enough on food production.
I was concerned I might have
missed something about the document I had signed off earlier this year, so I
have read it again.
There is a chapter on a
‘successful future for farming’ and another on risk management and resilience.
There is one on fairness in the supply chain, one on regulation and another on
protecting remote farming.
Then there are subsections on
research and development, labour availability and on maintaining standards in
future trade deals. So, I do not agree the consultation did not address farming
and food production.
However, we also need to
recognise the current Common Agricultural Policy is not about food production.
In fact, the current area-based payment regime is explicitly not about food
production. Instead, it is an upside-down system of subsidies which pays based
on how much land someone owns or controls, regardless of what they do with it.
It is a system which encourages
people to occupy land, but take few risks with it. With hindsight, the system
for decoupling of farm payments 15 years ago was a mistake which created the
bureaucratic quagmire we have today.
However, from where we are,
moving over time to a system of payment for the delivery of public goods, such
as high animal welfare standards, improved soil husbandry and more sustainable
farming, must make more sense.
