FW Opinion: Prime minister’s pig-ignorant words shame him
© Tim Scrivener By the time you read this our industry will have gathered in London for the return of the in-person Farmers Weekly Awards night.
This is a great celebration of the best food producers Britain has to offer.
It is where we come together to recognise the achievements of men and women throughout the UK who are leading the way in food production, environmental stewardship and business management.
See also: FW Opinion: Can Labour be trusted on farming promises?
You will find profiles of all our award winners later in the magazine, and I’m extremely proud that the Farmers Weekly team and our sponsors help to highlight the quiet work of so many people who deserve more recognition.
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But it will be completely understandable if many of them feel their celebratory mood tempered out of solidarity with the beleaguered pork industry.
Twice in interviews this week, the prime minister has wilfully refused to engage with what is now the worst financial and farm management crisis for pig farmers since the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.
Astonishingly, Boris Johnson claimed that farmers being forced to slaughter and waste healthy animals because they had run out of room on farm was no different to them going into the food chain.
I wish he could have said that to Farmer Focus contributor Sophie Hope, who writes powerfully in the livestock section this week that it is “heartbreaking and demoralising to see all our hard work effectively being thrown in the bin”.
Mr Johnson said it is entirely the role of business, not government, to solve plummeting abattoir throughputs caused by a combination of Brexit, the pandemic and the recent shortage of carbon dioxide gas.
And as he did all of this with a smirk on his face, I’m sure one phrase of his from 2018 returned to many people’s minds.
Back then, as foreign secretary he told a private reception: “F*** business” before jetting off to Kabul to avoid a vote on the third runway at Heathrow.
His words this week are an echo of that sentiment and not simply a result of fluffing two interviews amid the whirlwind of the Tory party conference.
These are the deliberate actions of a man taking a huge gamble not just with pig farmers, but both of his traditional support bases – small business owners and older voters.
Whole swathes of the former are not feeling listened to and the latter will be worst affected if inflation gets going and erodes their savings.
Perhaps most frustrating of all is that the solutions for our sector, outlined by the National Pig Association, are modest and entirely sensible.
They simply want temporary visas for skilled butchers to come and work here – something that has already been granted to the poultry sector – and a surge of support from supermarkets to prioritise British pork on their shelves.
Just that would be enough to clear the backlog of pigs on farms and, hopefully, return businesses to breakeven point.
Pig farmers are not asking for Brexit to be unpicked. They are not unwilling to take responsibility for their own business risk.
But they are damn sure going to remember every time the government refused to even show them a modicum of support, respect or sympathy when it could have prevented food being wasted and businesses going to the wall.
If this arrogance persists, food security will disintegrate and we will lose the award-winning farmers of tomorrow, who will go and work in an industry where they are valued.