December 16, 2024
Farm

SOS

Since I all too often forget my reading glasses, I frequently find myself having to guess the words of hymns. Some hymns however become part of our collective memories and there is one very familiar one which speaks in a rousing voice of  “England’s pleasant pastures seen”.

Part of the appeal of this country is the sheer diversity of its landscape. The gently folding hills of Devon with its deep reddish brown soil and thick hedges provides pasture which is particularly good for dairy whereas sheep are often best suited to some of the hillside farms in Cumbria or Wales. Kent has apple orchards surrounded by hawthorn whilst the south of England is renowned for its high chalk downland grazed by sheep who keep the scrub at bay and allow wild flowers to take hold and scrunch underfoot as walkers clamber up looking for far reaching views. The east of England with its vast flocks of birds scudding through huge skies is particularly good for arable whilst vegetables and potatoes grow well in the Scottish lowlands or the flatter land of Essex.

Flying over the land before descending into any airport whether Manchester, Heathrow or any other, there is something hugely comforting about the checkerboard of small fields and woodlands below. It is very much human size and therein is the reason that rural England has such appeal for those who live in towns or visit from abroad. It is approachable, it is friendly.

It is also very much part of our TV and radio life. Emmerdale Farm, The Archers, All Creatures Great and Small, Poldark, films such as The Holiday or any of the Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy adaptations are all set largely amongst rural life. Then you have the wealth of novels. The countryside gives us joy and it is not surprising that our landscape leads many of the Visit Britain campaigns.

But the countryside also has a purpose apart from its looks. To survive, human beings need to farm in order to eat and to plant or nurture trees in order to keep breathing. As we continue to build over water meadows we often have to recruit the help of farmers to circumvent flooding and as industrialisation reaches ever greater heights, climate volatility is pushing farming systems to their limits in all countries.

It should be basic political common sense that food security be at the forefront of any long term policy. Everything we eat comes from the efforts of some sort of farmer. Perhaps a father-and-daughter partnership working on a sheep and beef farm in north Somerset. Perhaps a farmer working all the hours that God gives to harvest malting barley for beer or whisky and hoping his teenage son, who has got lots of experience on the farm, might still want to learn the trade and go to agricultural college in the future.

Every farm needs barns, whether to store grain or shelter cattle. They need some sort of farmhouse to live in, they need equipment and they need money to tide them over when the harvest fails or the lambs aren’t born. Perhaps they have opened a café or tourist centre on a Cornish farm with camping facilities to make ends meet.

A combine harvester costs £500,000, tractors £120,000, drills £50,000. Depending on the type of farm you might need spreaders, balers, milking parlour, barns for lambing, a corn dryer and dry stores. However you look at it, farming is a very capital intensive business which is only viable if it is perceived as a long term venture. This makes it more about stewardship than earning a salary. A farming wage on average is between £25,000 to £55,000 a year and farmers often rely on the home team working in support of them often for little or no money, at all hours and seven days a week. It does not tend to be a cash rich business.

Research suggests that whilst supermarkets post hundreds of millions in profits each year, farmers receive less than 1% of the total profits for the food they produce.

Farming is fundamentally as much a vocation as it is a job. There is a huge pride in it allied with a deep love for and understanding of the animals they breed despite the fact that they are reared for food and a quiet but intense love for the landscape. For the way the light falls over the fells or the way the shadow is cast in the evening against an oak tree. For a millennia the world has run on the idea that the farmer takes the long view and borrows to invest in a combine, re-lay a hedge, plant 5,000 trees,  renovate an old barn, work to improve food defences precisely because they can pass the baton of such stewardship onto the next generation. Obviously if the next generation does not want to take on the burden, then the farm is sold and of course tax is paid.

However, the latest UK government policy threatens this entire long term view. It will make many smaller farms financially unviable with the inevitable result that some will cease to exist. Britain’s agricultural output will decrease making us even more dependant on foreign imports with all its attendant air mile costs and lack of green credentials. There is also a more hidden cost in that it has and will dishearten rural communities, removing their sense of worth and future employment.

Mental health has always been a concern in the farming industry. The pressure exerted by so many uncontrollable variables such as disease, climate and the supermarket giants’ control over prices is immense. The financial, physical, and mental toll of farming is already driving people out of the profession and discouraging new entrants from taking it up and this new policy will only exacerbate this trend. The new regime will actively discourage investment in farming activities as people fight to make fast money in order to meet their new financial obligations.

Ironically, the government has just pledged £22billion for carbon capture.  What about allocating a small portion to  the UK’s  nature-friendly, biodiverse, flood preventing, carbon capture farming budget? That  would both help the UK to meet its environmental targets and support farmers’ livelihoods.

Every person in this country would prefer that food prices did not increase, that we ate well and locally, that we could visit farms with our children and grandchildren, watch sheepdogs work, walk along ancient tracks across a headland viewing the newly planted crops just breaking through the knobbly earth to either side.

Phoebe says thank you for her hay and oats – and I say thank you for my porridge this morning

Farming is about the long view: the next 20, 50, 100 years and how we can tread lightly on this beautiful earth. Hope is such a small word but without it we begin to falter. We should be saying thank you to those who do their best to look after the earth and our food sources, not making it harder for them.