Opinion: Farmers have been ‘brainwashed’ into not fighting back
© Tim Scrivener After four months in office our new government is yet to announce anything that will restore confidence to our farming communities.
Agriculture is no higher up the priority list now than it was under the last inept administration.
The continued uncertainty is only adding to the gloomy, dark clouds swirling around our farm gates on a scale no one in my lifetime has experienced before.
See also: Opinion – farmers are the climate change scapegoats
About the author
The only real headline-grabbing policy announced so far is the requirement for all hens and poultry to be registered with Defra.
This has caused some controversy within the urban backyard hen-keeping fraternity, which are not happy about it.
So unhappy in fact, that thousands of frozen chickens, chicken nuggets and rubber chickens were registered in protest and the website crashed within a few hours of launching.
I was quite amused by the spirit of these people and their determination not to be told what to do.
Farmers are strait-laced and play by the rules, so I imagine everyone rurally who owns poultry will have counted their chickens, got their ducks in a row and registered them without ruffling any feathers.
Unlike our town-dwelling neighbours we have been brainwashed by supermarkets and successive governments into doing what is requested, no questions asked.
Recently we were invited – actually, we were told – to sign up to a new biodiversity assessment scheme, yet another way of supermarkets and environmental groups gaining access to our information and data without having to pay anything for it.
The promise of an expert arriving on farm to evaluate our biodiversity and then advise us on how to improve it is our reward.
A few years ago I would probably have complained.
It was always me writing letters to milk buyers grumbling about prices, calling out practices that I thought were unfair or processes which seemed ridiculous.
After years of trying and never getting anywhere, my fire has been extinguished and now I just tick the boxes and play along.
Over time those big companies have slowly but surely ground us down, so now we obediently comply to their increasing demands.
Like dogs, we roll over subserviently and obey our masters without question or complaint.
Like the milk we produce, we are separated, homogenised and standardised – akin to robots, we are all expected to be the same.
Anyone who happens to fall below the ever-changing industry standard is told they aren’t good enough and cast aside.
Honesty is an admirable quality and farmers are among the most honest and hard-working people on the planet.
But judging by the revelations in the media over the past few weeks, I’m not sure these are traits recognised by this new government.
Defra secretary Steve Reed has yet to get his teeth firmly into the farming side of his department, and introducing a register for hens is the worst he has managed so far.
It’s only a matter of time before he gets bored with the water companies taking him out for dinner and turns his attention on us.
When that happens, the Ringwraiths riding their black horses will be hunting us down and picking us off one by one.
Then when the storm clouds have dispersed, only the strongest will have survived.