Examination of Witnesses (Questions 73-79)
MR DAVID
ANSELL, MR
CHARLES COURSE,
PROFESSOR JOHN
ALLISTON, AND
MS KATE
RUSSELL
WEDNESDAY 30 JANUARY 2002
Chairman
73. Lady and gentlemen, welcome. Let us just
check who is who. We have got Mr Ansell, you are the Director
of the Institute of Agricultural Management, and Mr Course, a
Member of the Council. Then Professor Alliston, you are the Dean
of the School of Agriculture, the Agricultural College, and Ms
Kate Russell is from the School of Rural Economy and Land Management.
We understand the reasons why the Chairman is unable to be with
us. You know what we are trying to do; we are looking at the scenarios
for agriculture in a world in which subsidies are reduced, we
have to come up with various scenarios as to what level, and we
are trying to establish some of the parameters of the processes
for decision-making and the actual options available for people.
What we want to end up with is ideas, which we can then say to
individual farmers, "How do I respond to this?" So that
we are trying to talk to people who might be thinking a bit laterally
rather than to all the usual known suspects, who have given their
evidence to Sir Don Curry's report and I really do not intend
that we should ask them to reproduce it for ours. Could I ask
you, just quickly, without hesitation, deviation or repetition,
what is your reaction to the Curry (no relation) report?
(Mr Ansell) I think, probably to concur
with the general thrust of it, would be my position, on my reading
of it so far.
74. So you have found a general thrust?
(Mr Ansell) There was a redirection, I thought, in
the direction that probably we would broadly support.
75. Did you find a sort of new big idea in it?
(Professor Alliston) There were specifics of some
new ideas, as far as I was concerned, anyway, in certain elements
of it; the overall concepts, I think, have been widely talked
about.
76. Which were the bits you found and you said,
"My God, I wish I'd thought of that"?
(Professor Alliston) There were bits on education
that I could associate with, that we have heard about, but I thought
they were articulated quite well, so particularly the centres
of excellence, for instance. And the problem I guess I would have
with that is that if you specify too carefully the centres of
excellence then probably you have people travelling long distances,
where the colleges at the moment probably have a local base, some
of them. And, therefore, I think, while you could identify centres
of excellence, you would still want the general agricultural provision
in the colleges.
David Burnside
77. Can I ask, Mr Chairman, a specific question.
On a number of other reports that have investigated sectors within
industry, manufacturing or service, I have found one of the greatest
weaknesses in the report was not the general thrust but the generalities
in the report, and it did not quantify the state of the farming
industry in the next five or ten years in the way that other Government
reports have quantified, for instance, not very successfully,
sections of manufacturing industry. The impact was not quantified.
We did not know the impact on jobs of those directly or indirectly
related to farming under the proposals in the report, which I
think is a great weakness.
(Professor Alliston) Yes, I sense what you are saying
there.
Phil Sawford
78. You mentioned, Chairman, sort of the big
idea; it seems, from an initial view, that reconnection seems
to be the big idea, reconnecting farmers with markets, consumers
with food and people with the countryside. And do you think that
there has been a dysfunction, to that extent, that farming has
drifted away from food, consumers and everything else?
(Mr Course) I think one of the big issues, one of
the big problems, has been the industry, to some extent, has been
crystallised through the previous support mechanisms, and it has
not been able to react to market forces, it has not been able
to reallocate resources; and I think one of the main thrusts of
the Curry report is to start that process again, or release the
industry to readjust. And I understand fully why some of the lobby
groups and the pressure groups are anti this, because the natural
conclusion, in terms of what it will mean, is radical readjustment
of the industry and, I suspect, a significant reduction in the
number of farmers and farm businesses within the industry, which,
to some extent, the previous support mechanisms have prevented,
they have crystallised into the old, what we had 20 or 30 years
ago, they have not allowed the industry to readjust to market
mechanisms. And I think that is one of the most significant things.
I think there is a need to understand the quantification, but
I suspect it is quite dramatic, and, I think, to some extent,
the current statistics are already widely misunderstood. If you
look at the number of quoted farmers and farm businesses within
the industry, and whether you take the figure of 100,000 businesses
or 60,000 businesses, depending what threshold you cut people
off at, whether you say less than 25 hectares is not a farmer,
it is a hobbyist, or whether you say 100 hectares is a proper
farmer, the reality is that there are probably somewhere between
10,000 and 20,000 serious farm business decision-makers in the
agriculture industry at the present time, and a lot of the lobby
groups are very wary about facing up to that reality. And I think
that the natural conclusion of Curry, if you try to improve efficiency
within the supply chain, which is one of the specific things that
I think is good and should be focused on, is that, potentially,
you will halve the number of serious decision-makers in the industry.
And I think Government, looking at forcing through this pace of
change, needs to recognise what the implication will be on the
number of decision-makers, on the number of farm businesses and,
no less significantly, on the number of employees, it is agricultural
employees, probably, who will bear a not insignificant brunt of
a reduction in support. And those are just a few comments.
Mr Martlew
79. Can you comment briefly, looking at the
report yesterday and looking at some of the press coverage, there
seems to be a contradiction, and perhaps you can explain it. What
they are saying is, because farming is subsidised greatly, the
consumer is paying more for their food; can you explain how that
can be, if that is the case in the report, I think it is?
(Mr Ansell) It is mainly the effect on the internal
level of prices in Europe, as a result of protecting the Community
from cheaper produce from elsewhere in the world; that is the
major reason why food prices tend to be higher than they would
be in the absence of it.
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