Opinion: Farming’s mistake has always been believing it is different
© Adobe Stock Philosopher George Santayana stated: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”.
With hindsight the farming industry should have been rattled when the attacks on the collieries started.
The next warning was the steel industry, but the almost unforgivable failure of our industry was standing by and watching the fishing industry collapse.
Perhaps we believed we would always be protected by the government.
See also: Opinion – Budget just puts us on a. par with other industries
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Why have we believed this? Because they have allowed the NFU to sit at the big shiny table in No. 10 twice a year? Did we confuse the government’s financial support for actual support?
Because we produce food and people need food? A fair assumption to make, but so did the fishermen. Or was it just pure arrogance? Either way it has blinded us to the signals.
What do all these industries have in common? They’re manual, dangerous and dirty primary industries. As such, they are difficult for the government as they don’t understand them.
They are not hotbeds for MP recruitment any more, so are underrepresented in the halls of power.
This has led all too often to the government simply pushing industries out when they become “difficult” to align to the policy of the day.
When health and safety started to bite in the late 1970s, the government saw agriculture as an unprofitable sector with terrible health and safety figures, poor economics and producing items that could be sourced elsewhere.
Fast-forward to the present and, facing a perfect storm of new environmental policies and a lack of profit, we cost the government £2.4bn and contribute less than £1bn in corporation tax (even including fisheries and forestry), while producing goods that are currently available to buy in.
As shipping has become more prevalent, the opportunity to import these goods and export the environmental and social issues has been too tempting for our short-sighted governments.
It also provides them the opportunity to “dump” carbon emissions on the countries of origin for the production and only take accountability for a fraction of the shipping emissions.
We should have read the signals and banded together with other similar industries long ago. In the spirit of pastor Martin Niemoller, now they have come for us there is no one left to speak out for us.
Money talks. To have a voice we need to be a profitable industry with a clean carbon score.
We have to understand that the “how” is not the government’s problem, it’s ours – we need to step up and build on the success of previous wins.
Take NRoSO for example. Industry offered the government a workable solution and it staved off the pesticide tax.
We need to show our industry can be a positive contributor to the economy without costing the environment. Tough, but perfectly possible.
Above all, we need to stop parading our expensive machinery in London covered in cheap banners about being skint, and we need to stop using our children to fight the fight of our generation.
The government didn’t care about the miners’ children, families and legacies, why would we be different?
We are a tiny industry, and we must understand we are not “in negotiations”, we are at “fighting to survive” stage.
The narrative with the government needs to change, and fast, before they throw in the towel on us completely.