WE MUST ACT TO GET THE PUBLIC ON FARMING’S SIDE

I am by nature an optimist, writes Tom Corfield.  Even in the darkest of scenarios, I always try to find a silver lining, a reason to look to the future with confidence.  But as someone once said ‘optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable’, and that seems an apt quote in the current farming environment.

There has been a succession of recent hammer blows designed to knock any residual confidence out of the agricultural sector - despite the Labour manifesto saying ‘Labour recognises that food security is national security. That is why we will champion British farming’. 

The announcement on 11^th March that all of the Sustainable Farming Incentive money has been spent, and that the scheme is now closed to new applications, follows the inheritance tax announcement, the closure of capital grants, the sharp increase in planning fees, and the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which will empower local authorities to compulsorily purchase farmland with no consideration of its potential future value.  No wonder a recent NFU study showed that confidence in the agriculture sector is at an all-time low. 

But the optimist in me refuses to lie down.  I see a glimmer of hope in the widespread support amongst the wider population for farmers fighting the ‘tractor tax’.  Perhaps there is an awakening awareness of the importance of farming for all of us.  And if there is, maybe we can tap into that public support to force the hands of politicians to take the nation’s food producers more seriously.

Up until now, a nation addicted to cheap imported food has paid more attention to the size of their grocery bill than to where the food on their plate has come from.  But we are now entering an increasingly protectionist world where access to cheap imported food could very well be severely restricted, and where we can no longer rely on the support of those who we thought were allies.

In such a scenario, I believe the public can be readily persuaded to get behind the nation’s farmers.  But they will only do so if we are able to explain, in simple terms, the challenges we face. 

The clear messaging about the threat to family farms from inheritance tax has demonstrated that this is possible; we need to get much better, collectively, at explaining not just the challenges we face, but why they matter not just to farmers, but to everyone.

It may not reflect reality, but there has long been a perception amongst much of the population that farmers have had it good for a long time, and that the sector has enjoyed a level of subsidy which has not been available to the rest of the economy.  We now have a golden opportunity to smash that misconception, and to get the public on our side; if we do that, you can be sure that the politicians will follow.

And then we might even have a reason to be optimistic.