Editor’s view: Waiting for farm policy stability is a mug’s game
© Tim Scrivener The year is 2040. Newly appointed Liberal Democrat prime minister Stuart Roberts sweeps into Downing Street at the head of a Lib Dem-Labour coalition government after a startling campaign built around infrastructure pledges.
His promise to pipe water at any cost from newly independent Scotland to help roll back desertification in southern England was captured in the pithy phrase “Build Back Wetter”.
Surprisingly, this earns the backing of Scottish farmers, until it emerges they intend to use the funds to raise a militia to open up a second flank in their 10-year war with the Beaver Army.
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The Conservatives, now the third party in British politics after losing the support of rural England in the mid-2020s, immediately attack the scheme as a pipe dream created following the legalisation of marijuana (now Dyson Farming’s only crop).
The new team at the top of the Department for Minimising Famine pledges an immediate review into whether the fledgling Future of Farmed Sustenance (FFS) scheme is fit for purpose.
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Filmed in his autonomous tractor control bunker, NFU president Olly Harrison responds with a blistering attack that lambasts the review for causing yet more uncertainty for farmers at a critical time.
Breakaway militant group the British Farming Union begins fundraising for a protest involving spreading manure down Whitehall but, as it now costs £10,000/t, only manages to accumulate enough to fill a modestly sized wheelbarrow.
The last person at the AHDB writes an outlook piece forecasting bright prospects next season for West Country banana growers and the North Yorkshire coffee fields.
Over in the House of Lords, Baroness Batters gets up off the red benches and pleads for all sides to act together in the national interest.
“It is now 24 years since the Brexit vote and since then there has not been a plan for farming and the environment that has lasted more than 18 months,” she wearily observes.
Baroness Truss throws a lump of brie at her. Once again, the chamber erupts in chaos.
Far-fetched? Perhaps. But I still meet people on a daily basis who think that although new farm policy in each of our nations is having an extraordinarily long gestation, once it is birthed we will have certainty again about what our government wants from us.
Yet this will be a screaming infant that never settles. It will have a constantly changing procession of parents, each with very different views on its upbringing.
Have we had a coherent and long-term plan for the NHS yet that has actually stuck? How about for education?
The chancellor is on his second growth plan of the week and there have been about four other discarded versions since the Tories came to power.
And this is with just one party in charge.
Participation in future farming schemes is to be applauded. But anyone relying on them to stay solvent must do so at their own risk.
It is now looking much more likely that Labour will get a turn at the next election, and they will rightly have their own manifesto pledges, policy ideas and personalities to imprint on the project.
Participation in future farming schemes is to be applauded. But anyone relying on them to stay solvent must do so at their own risk.
It is time to live up to the independent-minded image we have of ourselves.
As our latest batch of Farmers Weekly Awards winners demonstrate, this is an industry fizzing with drive, talent and ingenuity, committed to solving all the problems in front of them.
The way forward is always murky. But despite everything, this is still one of the best jobs in the world.