Brexit and Farming.

[AlaninWales]

Monbiot on farm subsidies and Brexit: http://www.monbiot.com/2017/01/04/the-hills-are-dead/

The terrible legacy of European farm subsidies – and how we could use Brexit as an opportunity for something better

[Paulatic]

Sorry couldn't get my tablet to type.
You are suggesting that producers set prices without input from the goverment ? I would suggest a little unlikely.

Of course ministers were involved but remember the government were benevolent to farmers after their war effort. They were also resolved to not letting farming return to 'dog and stick' so evolved MAFF and ADAS creating jobs for the 'educated'. I was questioning your recall of the Min of Ag touring fields to estimate yields and set tariffs?

[Boyd]

I generally think that some farm subsidies are a good thing. Farmers are business people, and they will generally grow what makes them the most money, and they will do things that improve efficiency and profitability.

If we want farmers to grow certain things, or do certain things, we either need to provide incentive (subsidies), or legislate their activity in some way (like the legislation that protects hedgerows).

The problem, IMO, with EU subsidies is that I don't agree with the approach to farming that they subsidised. Whilst I doubt that we can get everyone to agree on things like that, at the very least, the system can now be designed to suit British farming, instead of European farming.

Exactly. Subsidising things we want/need to subsidize.

[PDQ Mobile]

Monbiot on farm subsidies and Brexit: http://www.monbiot.com/2017/01/04/the-hills-are-dead/

The terrible legacy of European farm subsidies – and how we could use Brexit as an opportunity for something better

I like Monbiot and I think many of his ideas are worthy of serious consideration.
There are two points here that I would like to comment upon.
Monbiot draws attention to the paucity of woodland in the uplands of Wales.
There are several reasons for this.
One is undoubtedly heavy stocking by sheep over many centuries.
The head subsidy schemes were very detrimental to woodland over a long period.
To redress this farmers were given generous incentives to fence woodland and to set new areas aside for tree planting. The funds often coming from EU.
I have already commented that it was the lack of policing of such schemes by our own domestic authorities (National Parks Authorities ,CCW etc)
that has led to their failure, rather than the EU subsidy schemes per se.
Another factor is of course plain greed ( and shortsightedness) on the part of the farmers in question.

Fire is another significant destroyer of trees. Most upland fires are deliberately started -prosecutions have been exceedingly rare, even when the culprit is known.
South Wales is particularly badly affected- the local youth seem to find a good wild fire a source of amusement. That they are destroying their own future fuels and timber plus an improved enviroment to live in, does not seem to enter their thick skulls.
Any attempt at re afforestation must go hand in hand with educating those groups or public money will literally go up in smoke.

Monbiot also seems to think that the hills of Wales could be afforested to altitudes similar to those on mainland Europe.
The natural tree line in N Wales is around 600 m, in the Alps it is around 1800m. Fruit trees are regularly cultivated at altitudes of over 1000m there. That is quite impossible in Wales.
Any deciduous woodland over, shall we say for the sake of argument, 400m in Wales will be incredibly slow growing for the geology and high rainfall results in relatively poor soils. Perhaps as much as a century to reach a height of 8 meters. The trees will be dwarfed and shaped by the wind.

I write this merely to point out that that whilst a re- afforestation would be most exceptionally welcome, there are significant hurdles to be overcome.
I have, on balance seen (over 40 years) the EU's influence as more environmentally beneficial and enlightened than otherwise .
The fault (of failure) can mostly be laid at the door of our own Authorities and the attitude of the Welsh farmer (there are of course notable exceptions!).

[Boyd]

Sorry couldn't get my tablet to type.
You are suggesting that producers set prices without input from the goverment ? I would suggest a little unlikely.

Of course ministers were involved but remember the government were benevolent to farmers after their war effort. They were also resolved to not letting farming return to 'dog and stick' so evolved MAFF and ADAS creating jobs for the 'educated'. I was questioning your recall of the Min of Ag touring fields to estimate yields and set tariffs?

Without the ministry of agricultural touring fields how could they come to any view on output and therefore prices?

[pete75]

Sorry couldn't get my tablet to type.
You are suggesting that producers set prices without input from the goverment ? I would suggest a little unlikely.

Of course ministers were involved but remember the government were benevolent to farmers after their war effort. They were also resolved to not letting farming return to 'dog and stick' so evolved MAFF and ADAS creating jobs for the 'educated'. I was questioning your recall of the Min of Ag touring fields to estimate yields and set tariffs?

Without the ministry of agricultural touring fields how could they come to any view on output and therefore prices?

Harvest is usually a good indicator of yields.

[Paulatic]

Sorry couldn't get my tablet to type.
You are suggesting that producers set prices without input from the goverment ? I would suggest a little unlikely.

Of course ministers were involved but remember the government were benevolent to farmers after their war effort. They were also resolved to not letting farming return to 'dog and stick' so evolved MAFF and ADAS creating jobs for the 'educated'. I was questioning your recall of the Min of Ag touring fields to estimate yields and set tariffs?

Without the ministry of agricultural touring fields how could they come to any view on output and therefore prices?

I've already stated the 'annual price review' was a round the table decision with the farmers holding the upper hand. I have no recollection whatever of mention of inspectors walking fields to estimate yields. Did they look at hens and estimate how many eggs they would lay?
I thought I was being generous and conceding that perhaps Horticulture might well have had tariffs to help them. Looking for evidence I've come across the following regarding tariffs. There were none.
https://www.corwin.com/sites/default/fi ... chap01.pdf

Dissident politicians did ques- tion the wisdom of a high subsidy agricultural policy from time to time, but quickly found themselves crushed by the weight of the agricultural establishment and its shared assump- tions. John Strachey had been Minister of Food from 1946 to 1950 and caused trouble for Williams: ‘at heart Strachey was never anything but a free-trader, and I don’t believe that he ever really appreciated what we were trying to do at the Ministry of Agriculture in the post- war years’. The official orthodoxy was that the policy was one of consumer subsidies, albeit largely paid to farmers (food subsidies to consumers were pegged in 1949). It is true that the Government had chosen not to follow the option of imposing tariffs on imported food, opting instead to continue with the traditional policy of allowing cheap food to enter the country and compensating farmers for the difference between guaranteed and market prices. Stanley Evans, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at MAFF after the 1950 election, nev- ertheless caused trouble by doing ‘everything he could to reduce the taxpayers’ contribution towards the settlement of the review’

[Flinders]

I like it your it your now predicating land prices.
Do you think some 500 acre farmers may have invested money into there farms? Including buying land?
You need to check land prices I have seen them go considerably higher than that.
I heard (could be bolocks) that Dyson paid £13,000 an acre for a vast estate.
Sometimes get it wrong? If you predict the future and get it right it's generally luck.
Again farmers WON'T be able to deal with what amounts to dumping (subsidies) by the EU. Are you sure you mate doesn't expect tariffs?

Dyson is buying masses of farmland. Estates may go for for more if they include a lot of houses and particularly a georgian mansion type place.Some land - prime silt sells for very high prices . I was talking about average arable land.

I remember a friend who was an economist telling me (many years ago) that if you looked at UK government farming subsidy after the war up to the late 70s it just about equalled the amounts the rents had gone up for farming- i.e., all those subsidies did in the long term was put taxpayers' money into the pockets of landlords.

One reason land has been bought up more recently is because you don't even have to farm it to get the single farm payment - you just keep the land in a theoretically farmable state and you get a nice free handout every year for doing nothing - which in some cases can be very large sums indeed.The recipients then talk (or write in newspapers when they own/edit them) about the disabled, or people made redundant after working and paying taxes all their lives to pay for such handouts to the already wealthy, as 'benefits scroungers' if they get a few tens of pounds a week to keep body and soul together while they work on a computer 40 hours a week to try to find a job.
Some farmers have retired and are just taking the money, leaving their land fallow, others have gone into breeding pedigree animals for fun subsidised by the payments.
Of course, it is different for tenant farmers.

[pete75]

I like it your it your now predicating land prices.
Do you think some 500 acre farmers may have invested money into there farms? Including buying land?
You need to check land prices I have seen them go considerably higher than that.
I heard (could be bolocks) that Dyson paid £13,000 an acre for a vast estate.
Sometimes get it wrong? If you predict the future and get it right it's generally luck.
Again farmers WON'T be able to deal with what amounts to dumping (subsidies) by the EU. Are you sure you mate doesn't expect tariffs?

Dyson is buying masses of farmland. Estates may go for for more if they include a lot of houses and particularly a georgian mansion type place.Some land - prime silt sells for very high prices . I was talking about average arable land.

I remember a friend who was an economist telling me (many years ago) that if you looked at UK government farming subsidy after the war up to the late 70s it just about equalled the amounts the rents had gone up for farming- i.e., all those subsidies did in the long term was put taxpayers' money into the pockets of landlords.

One reason land has been bought up more recently is because you don't even have to farm it to get the single farm payment - you just keep the land in a theoretically farmable state and you get a nice free handout every year for doing nothing - which in some cases can be very large sums indeed.The recipients then talk (or write in newspapers when they own/edit them) about the disabled, or people made redundant after working and paying taxes all their lives to pay for such handouts to the already wealthy, as 'benefits scroungers' if they get a few tens of pounds a week to keep body and soul together while they work on a computer 40 hours a week to try to find a job.
Some farmers have retired and are just taking the money, leaving their land fallow, others have gone into breeding pedigree animals for fun subsidised by the payments.
Of course, it is different for tenant farmers.

Single farm payment is about 90 quid an acre. Taking the Dyson example quoted above that ain't a very good on £13,000. You'd be far better off selling of the land and using it to buy properties to let out.

Tenant farmers get single farm payment as well and the usual rent per acre for AHA tenancies is about the same as the subsidy. SLightly more in soem cases and slightly less in others - effectively tenant farmers are getting their rent paid.

[Flinders]

Single farm payment is about 90 quid an acre. Taking the Dyson example quoted above that ain't a very good on £13,000. You'd be far better off selling of the land and using it to buy properties to let out.

Tenant farmers get single farm payment as well and the usual rent per acre for AHA tenancies is about the same as the subsidy. SLightly more in soem cases and slightly less in others - effectively tenant farmers are getting their rent paid.

£90 an acre per year.

The solution is no farm subsidies except for things we want farmers to do outside their normal work- like flood defence. As it is, we subsidise grouse moors who add to flooding problems.
As for rent, that rather proves my point- subsidies are just going into the pockets of landlords.

[Cyril Haearn]

I have read about the future and it works

Fermedubec.com/english/

[Vorpal]

The solution is no farm subsidies except for things we want farmers to do outside their normal work- like flood defence. As it is, we subsidise grouse moors who add to flooding problems.
As for rent, that rather proves my point- subsidies are just going into the pockets of landlords.

I think that farm subsidies could very well be used to encourage farmers to grow crops that they might not otherwise, increase agricultural diversity, reduce chemical applications, change irrigation methods, join agricultural studies, etc. Also, there may be some disagreement over what is 'normal' work. Is maintaining hedges normal work? or planting them? How about field verges?

[ambodach]

This reminds me of the £320M given by the EU to the Westminster Govt. specifically to subsidised Scottish hill farmers. Somehow it got diverted to the pockets of large lowland farms in southern England. A cynic could surmise all sorts of reasons for that. I could not possibly comment.

[Ben@Forest]

This reminds me of the £320M given by the EU to the Westminster Govt. specifically to subsidised Scottish hill farmers. Somehow it got diverted to the pockets of large lowland farms in southern England. A cynic could surmise all sorts of reasons for that. I could not possibly comment.

I'd like to see the evidence for that. My experience is that EU funding in the agricultural sector has to be spent on what it was committed for, this has sometimes meant that grants or payments have suddenly been pulled because in Brussels they have decided that the MAFF/DEFRA interpretation of it has been wrong. Also the distribution of EU money relating to agriculture has gone to the Scottish government since devolution so if true it must have happened before 2000/2001.

Many years ago l visited a farmer, told him what the forestry grant was and what he would expect. I got back to the office to find it had been cancelled with immediate effect and l had to ring and tell him to ignore everything l had told him. I'm not saying that exclusively happens to the UK, l'm sure all European farmers have been affected by what the EU has agreed and how national ministries interpret it.

Upland farming is hard and the subsidies make no one rich, in Britain they are as much about landscape preservation as the production of lamb. If a government decided to make woodland restoration grants very attractive, with ongoing high foregone payments I'm sure a lot of sheep farming would disappear, but it would not only be a cost exercise - the way we 'expect' our uplands to look would change.

[ambodach]

Ben@Forrest I do not bother to keep details of government misdeeds as there are so many of them but I assure you that money given specifically for Scottish farmers was withheld and redirected to English farmers. This was within the last couple of years.