Opinion: Avoiding ‘Mustardies’ and men with clipboards
Charlie Flindt © Kathy Horniblow When the Sustainable Farming Incentive’s (SFI) doors were suddenly slammed shut a few weeks ago, we breathed a small sigh of relief that we were unaffected.
We have made it our business plan to run the new “downsized” farm without having anything to do with it – one of my retirement ambitions was to avoid men with clipboards as much as possible.
It’s true that we did sign up for the SFI “pilot”, and were handsomely rewarded for all the online questionnaires and Zoom meetings.
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But when the man turned up to do an inspection with a precision GPS aerial sticking out of his backpack, we couldn’t help thinking that it wasn’t the “hands off/soft touch” concept that we’d been led to believe it was, and decided we’d not be taking it further.
And the more I see and read of the multitudes of schemes with their alphabet soup of classifications and categories, the more it seems that modern farm management is rarely done by farmers.
They’ve been reduced in recent years to “land managers” – a hideous phrase much favoured by my landlord – taking instructions from batteries of agents.
We were having a bit of a squabble with the ministry over our Countryside Stewardship a few months ago.
Nothing serious, but a few phone calls were needed, and during one of the early ones, the man from the ministry casually asked if he could talk to our agent.
This was a bit of surprise. We have a fine land agent, but he’s nothing to do with these matters; he’s kept in reserve for heavy things like rent reviews.
The ministry man seemed even more surprised. It was almost as if all three-letter acronyms should be whisked out of farmers’ hands and handled by the mustard-trousered brigade.
I raised this topic with a well-known drinking companion (who wished to remain anonymous, but there’s probably no chance of that).
He was somewhat less than complimentary; he felt that the Mustardies love to deal with other Mustardies in the ministry, in an incestuous “top agricultural college” old boys’ network.
The latter write the rules so that only their old pals know what the hell’s going on. The farmers really are shut out.
Something told me he was speaking from experience, and wasn’t just angry because his determination to start spring barley drilling as soon as conditions were right (based on over a centuries’ worth of family experience of his farm) had been questioned by new “management” in a faraway Mustardy Suite.
It was mooted that life would be simpler without all the three letter acronyms – but, for now, that’s just pie in the sky.
Of course, if we had another 1976 drought that left us with a barn full of gramophone needles (look it up, kids) things would change.
Or America had a new president wreaking trade havoc as he drives his MAGA bulldozer through the globalist agenda.
So I had to cheer the Buckinghamshire farmer abandoning his plans for SFI on some of his acres, after months of delay and ministry prevaricating, and deciding to put the whole lot into spring wheat.
We used to grow spring wheat occasionally. Moderate yields, cheap to grow, good proteins, if I remember rightly. And definitely no Mustardies needed.