I’ve come into farming late after a previous life in education and I can say that farming is really, really hard work, even for experienced farmers: seven days a week, early starts, physically demanding. Farming is also very varied: dairy farming is very different from sheep farming and totally different from crop growing. Thus, while the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), as an association of small/medium/large businesses with very different demands, seeks to represent everyone and has subcommittees on everything, it understandably finds that difficult.
Challenges to farming
Northern upland farming is particularly difficult financially and very traditionally minded, though often the old ways are the best, developed over generations on the land. But change is happening, with diversification essential in order to make a living: turning barns into holiday cottages, planting woodland to secure carbon credits, making yoghurt, cheese or ice cream. Farmers are necessarily very focussed on income and happily embrace, for example, that the biggest market for lambs and sheep meat is Ramadan and particularly the family feasts at Eid.
Another issue is that we have an ageing population of farmers (average age over 60, I believe), while farmhouses and land are incredibly expensive, so as a younger person coming into farming, you either take over the family farm, or become a tenant farmer, or just labour. Many have local second jobs. Two people living close to me went to East Anglia in the summer to drive combine harvesters to get some income.
And then there’s climate change. All the rain over the last year has been very damaging: arable farmers can’t plant crops, or see crops drowned; stock can’t go outside onto flooded land; it’s been a terrible year for lambing. No one could get large equipment on the sodden fields. Climate scientists predict that this is becoming the pattern now in the UK: winters mild and wet, summers dry and hot. We barely had a frost last winter in Sedbergh. Next winter will be an interesting test. This could go seriously wrong pretty quickly.
Farming today: the weight of bureaucracy
Not all farmers voted for Brexit – it’s estimated that they did so by a small majority – but most farmers hated the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) both in its detail and its bureaucracy. Boris Johnson claimed the CAP was “demented” and in places “corrupt”. But in terms of paperwork little has changed: checks previously carried out for the CAP continue and are now made by Defra. There is a lot of very detailed bureaucracy and record-keeping involved. As a newbie I was astonished to discover that every field and bit of land has an official map and number, cattle and horses are individually registered, and you need to record and report any stock movements to anywhere else even if only for a day.
Post Brexit there was no plan whatsoever as to how to manage the new situation and it’s been disastrous. The basic payment scheme was criticised, but it was a known amount and people could plan. Then in came land-management schemes: firstly Environmental Stewardship (ES), then they replaced that with Countryside Stewardship (CS), which is now being absorbed by the Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI) within an overall Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) framework.
SFI has been introduced bit by bit and no one understands where we are or where it is going. The body responsible for this is the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), who are notoriously slow and inefficient, and often the person you are eventually connected to (if you’re lucky) can’t actually help you. Last week I had a rant down the line at someone from RPA, and then asked, “Do you get lots of calls like this?” He replied immediately, one word: “Yes.”
Payment support for farmers: Kafka would be proud
Defra started to cut the basic payment scheme so now it’s a quarter of what it was: that reliable income that helped farmers pay base costs like farm insurance (me: £4,000 pa) is slowly leaking away. We have also had a doubling in price for things such as fertilisers and vets’ fees.
The replacement payment system involves much less cash globally (just as the EU regional funds have not been replaced). The ES/CS/SFI system involves detailed bidding for funds under various headings, basically land-management items or capital goods items. So you might, after a lot of effort, get modest sums per hectare, which come with specific conditions. The documentation is impenetrable and constantly changing
Might farmers be turning away from the Tories?
Tories have taken their huge majorities in rural seats for granted but people are seriously angry at all this incompetence. At the 2023 NFU Conference in Birmingham the secretary of state, Thérèse Coffey, gave just a short speech and then refused to take questions, saying she had to get back on the train. The audience booed her. Since then the government have been scrambling to make amends, but when the prime minister went to the conference this year and said “I’ve got your backs” no one believed him.
It’s an open goal, as Sedbergh’s previous MP, LibDem Tim Farron, was one of the first to notice. Five years ago he never mentioned farming but he’s right to be punching this bruise. However, now, as a result of boundary changes, disaffected voters in this constituency need to see Labour as the anti-Tory alternative.
What can Labour offer?
Labour started the year by pledging ‘a new deal for farmers’, with ideas continuing into the election manifesto: a Labour government would:
- Seek a veterinary agreement with the EU to cut red tape at the border and help with exports
- Ensure that at least half of the food served in schools, hospitals and prisons would be British
- Create a new publicly owned energy company – GB Energy – to keep costs down
- Allow farmers to plug their renewable energy into the grid
- Create a flood resilience taskforce.
Labour has committed to a rural crime strategy. The party is also promising a Countryside Protection Plan to rescue our diversity, with initial aims including three new national forests and eliminating bee-harming pesticides. And then there is the current planning system to be overhauled, widely seen to be hampering the growth of rural businesses especially in national parks. Other policies can also help rural areas, such as the commitment to skills development to equip the next generation of farmers.
A chance for Labour to win over the rural vote
The Tories are currently very unpopular with the farming community. The government, they feel, has ignored them and treated them very poorly in terms of reduced payments, confusing schemes and rotten trade deals. There should therefore be a receptive audience for Labour policies that show a proper understanding of the needs of farmers.
It may well be time for a sea change in the rural vote.
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