The fight is on for farmers and the environment
Nearly 200 members of the agricultural industry turned out to hear the latest news on Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) at the South of England Agricultural Society’s Autumn Conference.
Arable and livestock farmers and landowners from across the region listened intently to a summary of what lay ahead over the next four years, as the European Commission reviews its policies affecting their lands and livelihoods.
Presenting the complex scenarios were Peter Kendall, President of the NFU and a farmer himself, and Professor Allan Buckwell, Policy Director of the Country Land & Business Association (CLA). Each speaker gave an analysis of the latest news from Brussels, with the proposals in a CAP review having been leaked the day before the Conference, last Wednesday (November 16).
Professor Buckwell said the CAP reforms would not be implemented before January 2014, with draft regulations expected next July. He said the changes finally agreed would reflect the biggest financial shock to hit Europe in this lifetime as well as how the economy panned out over the next two years. At the moment, he said the CAP was a bit like a teenager: “a rather spotty set of arrangements that is a bit obnoxious!”
However, Professor Buckwell stressed the CAP had to embrace the environment and the need for increased food production worldwide.
He said: “The more we find that we are in an era of food insecurity, and therefore shortages and high prices, then, of course, the more farmers will be producing and the more the environment will be threatened, which is why we need a policy that can cope with both.”
Professor Buckwell said the proposals that would affect future payments received by farmers and the way they applied for them, were “obscure” and the positive ones had to be “teased out”. He commented: “We have got to engage in a constructive way and enable a route through that allows profitable farming in Europe.”
Peter Kendall spoke at the Conference before flying out to Brussels on Thursday to meet other European farming representatives to discuss the latest CAP proposals. He said they made no difference to the direction farming had to move in: to become an industry that was important to the future and that took its environmental responsibilities seriously rather than one that was old-fashioned and whingeing that life was unfair. “We have to go to our government and say we can find solutions rather than always going and asking for money to bail us out,” he said.
An important message Mr Kendall conveyed was that farmers would rather farm without subsidies in an improved market place than have to depend on handouts to cope with the volatility and fluctuations of weather, volumes and markets. He told the audience: “We should be driving an industry that is more stable in the future and therefore gives more world stability.”
The presentations by the speakers were followed by a series of questions from the audience that added to the debate about the needs of the farming community, especially in the High Weald where Less Favoured Areas were not rewarded as well, one speaker argued, as upland areas, even though farming was often equally hard.
The Conference, held at the South of England Centre’s Norfolk Pavilion at Ardingly, near Haywards Heath, was sponsored by specialist solicitors Mayo Wynne Baxter, Sussex and Kent based advisers Complete Land Management, and leading industry bankers Lloyds TSB Agriculture.
Graham Sanders, Agricultural Banking Manager for Lloyds TSB, who chaired the meeting, thanked the speakers for bringing so much knowledge and information to the Conference. Referring to the CAP debate, Mr Sanders concluded: “We have had seven years of recession and this industry has survived it, and I think we are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel when we will not need that subsidy.”
The Conference raffle raised £300 with a further £300 matched by Lloyds TSB Agriculture for The Society’s charity this year, the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution.