Opinion: Government should learn from Trump how to value farmers
© Adobe Stock Have you ever wondered why farmers are hated so much?
Are people conditioned into thinking, from times gone by, that we are all Lords and Ladies of the Manor?
Do the biased, legacy media stir up emotions, pedalling tripe on how we are killing the planet, aided and abetted by the likes of John Kerry, special presidential envoy for climate, trotting out half-truths about industrial agriculture?
See also: Opinion – farmers are the climate change scapegoats
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Then we have college dropout Greta Thunberg, appealing to the youth of today.
Clearly being a social influencer carries more weight than proven science coming from the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, where they take a much less alarmist view on climate change.
Popular culture also plays a massive part in the animosity towards farmers.
You only have to listen to the irritating “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell and its countless cover versions, with its rhetoric of splashing DDT about like it’s going out of fashion (the product, incidentally, was banned in most countries in the early 1970s).
The public perception is that we just douse crops with chemicals and fertiliser for fun.
Even aside from farmers’ environmental consciences stopping them doing that, there is so little margin that we have to be acutely aware of application rates and timings.
Do we get a bad name because the public think our place of work, in many cases our sole source of income, is some sort of playground for dog walkers, dirt bikes, illegal camps and a dumping ground for people’s rubbish?
If I tried to house 40 steers in somebody’s front garden, I’m sure they would remonstrate.
In real life we obviously can’t take a leaf out of the popular pro-rancher, pro-farming TV series Yellowstone.
The story follows big corporates trying to swallow up Middle American farms, but the heroic Dutton family resort to throwing their adversaries under a cattle grid.
If we continually give away food at less than the cost of production in two-for-one deals, it is neither “buying” us friends nor winning favour with consumers who seem to be so disconnected from British agriculture that they don’t care.
All we are doing is devaluing food and devaluing our future negotiating power, putting the next generation in a worse position than we are already in.
Instead, we need to find a way of re-engaging with the British public and championing our produce and the way we produce it.
When the AHDB asked what levy money should be spent on, one of the top answers was education.
So as farmers (and levy payers) we have given them the mandate to spend considerable resources in our schools and colleges to nurture a more positive outlook on farming.
I’m envious of the support that American farmers are going to get from president-elect Trump. The rural vote matters to him, and he’ll take care of them.
Many may disagree with tariffs and dislike what they refer to as his patriotic jingoism, but it’s a poor job if our own government can’t look after us. If they don’t, who will?
It feels like D-Day for British agriculture, and it’s more critical than ever that farmers stand together to educate the government and the public on what we do and who we are.
To quote Bruce Springsteen: “Wherever the flag is flown we should take care of our own.”