Examination of Witnesses (Questions 620
- 627)
WEDNESDAY 6 MARCH 2002
MR NICK
BARRETT, MS
JACQUETTA FEWSTER,
MR GRAHAM
WYNNE AND
MS VICKI
SWALES
620. It may be more efficient than getting my
parish council to do it.
(Mr Barrett) The notion of paying land managers and
farmers to do the work of the highway authorities is something
that we think about. The mechanisms by which you do that—you
are talking about whole local government—are difficult.
The notion of sub-contracting managers or farmers—
621. Very often there is no money directly provided
for this purpose so the issue is really to say "you have
this amount of footpath on your property with these stiles, you
are paid a unit amount to do that and if you do not do it you
will not get the money and you will also be prosecuted",
a simple mechanism. I would have thought that would be a more
effective use of the powers we have in this area than what we
have got at the moment.
(Mr Barrett) Ultimately we would like something that
works. Our argument is premised on the fact that it is a shortsighted
local authority that does not see the economic value and other
values, health, etc., etc., of a cleared footpath. Actually they
should be putting money into clearing footpaths and whether they
want to sub-contract farmers to do it or otherwise is up to them
but they should be putting money in because there is a greater
benefit to their community. Should the footpaths be opened? I
can only return to foot and mouth to point out what happened to
the countryside when the footpaths were closed.
Phil Sawford
622. Local food and other opportunities to generate
income. You suggest that people have lost the link between food
and the landscape. What other things could farmers do to generate
income, to sell directly to walkers and others through the marketplace?
How could they re-establish that link between food and the countryside?
(Ms Swales) I think if you go out and talk to farmers
there are quite a lot of initiatives developing. There is quite
a strong entrepreneurial spirit out there amongst many farmers,
although obviously they have gone through a very tough time recently,
in terms of them looking at market opportunities, whether that
relates to marketing the food they have got. I spoke to a farmer
last year as part of the Hills Task Force who basically was taking
the lamb from Cumbria down to Borough Market in London and he
was getting more for a leg of lamb than he was getting for the
whole lamb up in Cumbria. He had taken those sorts of initiatives.
Of course that is not the answer for everybody but I think there
are a lot of farmers out there looking and exploring new markets,
local food links and getting their food to consumers, getting
local hotels, for example, to buy and use local produce. The supermarkets
have a role to play here in helping to promote and source local
regional foods. Some of the supermarkets have taken some of those
initiatives. I know Booths Supermarket, which is a northern chain,
for example, is sourcing beef and lamb very much from the local
farmers and has made commitments as to the amount of beef and
lamb they will sell through their stores. There is a role for
the whole food industry to come together to help farmers on the
food side. There are lots and lots of really interesting ideas
out there. I was very impressed by how many ideas there were within
farming families. People are thinking creatively, not just about
themselves as food producers but delivering things in the broader
sense. Farmers' wives are getting heavily involved in diversification
and setting up new businesses. One which made me smile particularly
was a farmer's wife in the Yorkshire Dales, a very remote rural
area, who was making high class lingerie and selling it through
a mail order company and making a very good income and bringing
it back into the farm and keeping that farming business and that
farming family afloat. That is the last thing you would have thought
of in relation to a farming business. There is a lot of really
good stuff going on out there but it needs help from Government,
it needs pump priming, farmers need advice and training, getting
the skills to do those sorts of things. If for the last 30 years
you have concentrated on rearing your sheep or your cattle or
producing wheat or barley and suddenly you are starting to move
into these sorts of areas it is really quite a new challenge for
a lot of people and that is where there is an incredibly important
role for Government in facilitating that change which is needed.
623. But how do we get the link? If you actively
encourage ramblers or bird watchers or whatever on to your land,
how do you get some income from that? Do you just let them walk
past the house or do you sell ice creams? Are there not ways that
you can join those two things together so you are not just someone
who passes by the farm gate on the way to look at the birds but
there is a "hello, let us sell you something", there
is a more direct link?
(Ms Swales) I think many farmers are doing that. I
was in the Lake District over the weekend in Borrowdale and there
is a very good farming family there, it is actually a National
Trust farm. They set up a café, they started with a café,
they have an access route through their farm so they are grabbing
people in and selling them teas, scones and whatnot. The next
step they took was to say "Hang on a minute, people are asking
about the farm and what we do here. We have got good fell-bred
lamb" so they have got a refrigerator in the café
and they are selling vacuum packed lamb to walkers and people
who are walking away and putting it in the boot of their car.
That is a very practical demonstration of the sorts of things
that farmers are doing. They also offer B&B. They have truly
gone down the diversifying route but they are essentially still
a very typical hill farm in the environmentally sensitive area
of the Lake District and are looking after the environment too.
It is a very beautiful place, if you know it. Farmers are doing
that. Okay, it is not going to be for everybody, it is not going
to be the answer for everybody, but there are a lot of opportunities
out there and I think that is exactly how the connections are
being made in people's minds.
(Mr Barrett) The Ramblers' Association has something
like 600 organised walks every week and then, of course, there
are literally millions of individuals, groups of friends, who
go walking in the countryside every week. Those people are stopping
off at pubs, B&Bs, cafés, shops, etc., and some of
those have farmer involvement already. It is the obvious things
like food, accommodation, crafts, services, that are the things
that can be directly sold to users of the countryside through
the marketplace. The issue is about the farmers being in effect
the downstream beneficiary of improved landscape and stewardship
in the sense that people who come into the countryside do create
opportunities for diversification.
624. Could I quickly move on to organic food.
Is there any evidence that people buy organic food because it
is good for the environment? We know that people will buy Fair
Trade food because of human rights, we know that people will buy
organic food probably through animal welfare considerations, but
at the end of the day we often want cheap food and people perhaps
turn a blind eye. Is there evidence that people buy organic food
because it is good for the environment? Second to that, if they
pay that premium for organic food, how can we guarantee that any
part of that is passed on to the farmer?
(Mr Wynne) The evidence suggests that people buy organic
food for a variety of reasons and I suspect a perception of health
benefits is at the top of those reasons, but it is more complicated
than that and there is a limited amount of research which says
that the environment definitely figures in there as one factor.
The second question was how do you ensure that the premium gets
back to the farmer? You cannot ensure that. The farmer and the
food chain can work to help a large proportion of that get back
to the farmer himself but I do not think there can be any guarantees.
Direct marketing obviously from those organic farmers who can
cope with that, and that is quite a big business challenge so,
as Vicki said, I would not suggest that every farmer suddenly
went into direct processing and marketing, but those that have
are getting very good results. I think the food chain centre idea
in the Curry Report is one interesting proposal to help to promote
a more even distribution through the food chain.
Chairman
625. We must move on. Can I ask one final question.
We tend to think of farming and food production on one side and
then on the other side we list all these wonderful things like
the environment, recreation, as if they are all part of a coherent
whole but there are bound to be tensions, are there not, for example,
between the encouragement of biodiversity and access? To what
extent are we talking about compatible alternatives to food production
and to what extent do we have to make choices?
(Mr Barrett) You are right to say there are tensions,
and you gave the example of the tension between biodiversity and
access. I think tension is fair but conflict, no. A practical
example of that was the environmental recreation conservation
NGOs with a total membership of something like six million worked
very harmoniously together on the Countryside and Rights of Way
Act and managed to resolve those kinds of tensions to a very real
extent. The RSPB, for example, were not against public access
and the ramblers were not against appropriate and sensible restrictions
during the breeding season, for example. What everybody wanted
was sensitive land management. I think there is broad consensus
out there amongst environmental recreation conservation groups
about what sort of a countryside we should be striving to create.
626. You are going to continue this happy consensus,
are you?
(Mr Wynne) If I might add, to take that a stage further,
at the moment all of those many interests which are identified
do feel largely excluded from current public policy in the agriculture
sector and that, to some extent, is why it is easy to band together
and make joint arguments. Assuming the reform does come, and yes
there are going to be choices and priorities, I would like to
suggest whilst I said earlier it is quite difficult to put a pound
sign, to put a pure economic valuation on some of those commodities,
those public goods, they are fantastically well quantified in
their own right. The data sets on biodiversity, what are the most
threatened, the most important globally and internationally, the
data is superb, and coming up with a rational set of priorities
of where you direct and where you target public expenditure through
a new policy I really do not think is that big a problem. I think
there will have to be compromises but I agree with my colleague,
I think you can work those through without too much problem.
627. You both said that we all know where we
want to go in a sense and while we are articulating aspirations
we need to move to a determined policy and we need to move to
a policy in which you have got a broadly accessible scheme for
farmers with the ability to enhance that and increment that. Whether
we do it by bidding into the scheme, which has got many attractions
in terms of setting a rate, or whether we do it by a fixed scheme
is another matter. It has also been remarked that things like
countryside stewardship and ESAs may not be very effective and
certainly are administratively extremely heavy. How we square
the circle between schemes which are sensitive enough to reflect
the local environment and yet they are not so complex that the
administrative cost is very heavy and they are burdensome is clearly
something that we have got to crack. If you have got any way of
cracking it would you let us have it some time in the next six
weeks. I am not asking you to reply to that now, I am leaving
you that to mull on. At some stage we have got to sit down and
say this is the sort of way in which farmers can come into these
schemes, this is how we are going to describe them, there is not
an agenda there, and you clearly have some very strong interests
in getting an agenda which works from everybody's point of view,
the farmer, the administrative point of view, value for money
as far as the public is concerned and definably in terms of cost,
which is the eternal Treasury preoccupation.
(Mr Wynne) We would be delighted to provide that information,
therefore I will not apply to endeavour to reply to that to now,
but let me just make this one last point, please. The kind of
incremental slow progress we are making in policy reform at the
moment is, I think, the most disastrous model for the farming
community. Before we get to the stage of being able to do that
we have to step wise change so that there is enough money in the
pot to pay for public benefits, to come up with a suite of rational
schemes which will satisfy the question that you have given me.
We can do it but we have to move, therefore, a substantial chunk
of money from production subsidies into a system which pays for
public goods as soon as possible.
Chairman: Thank you very much for that and thank
you for coming, it has been a very interesting session. If you
would like to give way now we have the Council for the Protection
of Rural England, who have probably been sitting behind you in
any case, so we do not need to do any introductions with them,
we will go straight in. Thank you very much. If there is anything
that you wished you had said which you have not, tell us, and
if there is anything you said you wished you had not then it is
a bit late. If there is anything you want to clarify then please
get in touch. Thank you.
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