Memorandum submitted by Mr GH Cole MA
AGRICULTURE AND EU ENLARGEMENT
1. The reorganisation of existing marketing
arrangements in Britain is the most pressing problem for all of
the nation's farmers if they are not to be exploited—impoverished
and a continuing drain on the state's and EU resources. This is
particularly true of the livestock and predominantly grassland
areas of Britain.
2. Farmers need to be pushed, kicked, or
bribed into participation in cooperative ventures. It is particularly
noticeable that when aroused of our farmers go abroad they go
to see how others produce, grow grass, grain etc etc. But rarely
do they go to study how the Danes or the Dutch market the product.
And farming visitors from Europe always comment on our lack of
organisation.
3. It's no use politicians flinching from
a responsibility to "nanny" them. This must be done
or multi-national food processing companies are going to exploit
those family farmers who have the potential to practise sustainable
farming methods and whom the Nation will need desperately in the
none too distant future.
4. If we are to counter the vile and illegal
practices revealed in the poultry industry, for example, by a
notable Panorama programme, then farmers cooperatives must
be in control, otherwise as we are seeing already in Europe (Poland
for example)—large American companies are going to move
in to inflict on the countryside and the hapless European consumer
the worst environmental effects and health problems associated
with health, waste disposal etc of the half million head beef
feedlot or the million hog pig farm. (Refer to that excellent
brochure produced by the CWS "Food Crimes" published:
May 2000.)
5. "Farmers markets" tickle the
public imagination but they are really medieval in their operation.
However they create an atmosphere of nostalgia in a public seeking
safe food. Only farmer owned and run coops can do all the market
research, quality, control, etc etc which the Swedes, Danes and
Dutch take for granted as the role of their large but not market
dominant organisations.
6. Because government and politicians have
been so remiss over the past 50 years (ever since the Min. of
Food was the only buyer) inaction and a Farmer NFU mind-set which
cannot conceive that there may be a better way of doing things—the
supermarkets have taken over in this country those functions which
should be done by farmers organisations themselves which are not
responsible to outside shareholders.
7. If politicians and farmers are alarmed
at the continual rise in vCJD cases amongst young people you need
look no further than the practices which allow the reclamation
of offal as "meat" in the furtherance of efficiency
and PROFIT. As I have said elsewhere we the producers presently
get the blame for such fraud.
8. And then you are alarmed by obesity!
Or are we as a nation too ignorant or naive to be unable to make
the connection?
9. Rural Regeneration Schemes or any of
the plethora of measures introduced by the government these past
few years will be of no avail without a radical seismic shake
up of the marketing system. (As Prof Riordan commented about the
pilot ESA schemes, "we in Britain are masters at throwing
money around like confetti and none of it doing much good".)
10. It is no use politicians, DEFRA advisers
or officials shrugging their shoulders dismissing the demise of
smaller environment-friendly family farmer as inevitable against
the forward march of American backed multi-national big business
. . . which is all dependent on cheap oil. When the oil reaches
a price of a pound a litre we will wake up and find that our own
large farmers are not as efficient as we thought. Politicians
ought to know that the latest predictions for the slow down in
world oil production will come as soon as 2007.
11. Better to listen to Monsieur Bove than
George Bush and his financial "handlers". Otherwise
the small family farm business will disappear into oblivion and
soon. He will have gone before you have wakened up and decided
you need him as a gardener . . . gone to stack supermarket shelves
and enjoying for the first time in his life a regular wage, regular
hours and no capital involvement. It will be costly to get him
back.
12. As Prof Monbiot admirably stated what
a majority of thoughtful people realized, Bush and Blair went
into Iraq to get at the oil . . . all the other reasons were smoke.
Yet here we are in little Britain pursuing American backed big
farms policies sitting at the end of a 7,000 mile pipeline for
our oil.
13. In the next decade Poland and Hungary
will come to a dominant position in the EU Agricultural Sector.
It is to be hoped that an improving Russian economy will be able
to absorb their production. Otherwise in the face of such competition
without complete reform of our marketing systems a majority of
British farmers are doomed.
14. Denmark, with no oil and an eye to the
future, is now 22% self-sufficient on wind power rising to 30%
while Britain with the largest reserves in Europe allows nimbyism
to reign supreme.
15. So as part of the reorganisation of
the CAP—funds should be directed to the installation of
a couple of turbines in every village in the land especially of
the type installed by Messers JStobart and Son at Hesket, Newmarket
in Cumbria to power their cattle feed mill. Adequate, modest in
scale, serving the community, yielding income to the village community
and pollution free.
16. I have stated in my previous submissions
to consultations that in my opinion all production subsidies
should be removed forthwith and completed within 18 months.
Farmers have known that decoupling etc etc and
reform of the CAP have been coming ever since Agenda 2000 and
protracted "phase out" as is presently outlined merely
puts off decision day.
17. Currently the NFU are bleating for a
historical basis. They would. For this method will allow Oliver
Walston to continue to wave "my £200,000 Christmas present
cheque from Brussels". I have said before, if my cousin and
the Walstons of this world cannot farm their 800 and 1,200 hectares
of the finest land in Europe without a subsidy then the sooner
they go out of business the better.
18. However if we want to provide the European
public with the countryside they desire then we need a vast expansion
of those areas, districts regions classed as AONBs etc, and farmers
paid adequately to manage them at a living wage.
19. I have been in the Lake District ESA
scheme since its inception. I have no objection to being a landscape
gardener BUT in such areas of outstanding beauty we should be
properly paid as gardeners—that is if you want our young
people to stay here, or in the Alps, or the Tatra mountains.
20. Government has to indoctrinate the NFU
and their hardcore traditionalists who take the view: "have
land . . . must grow food" to change their attitudes. However
we have now a whole army of bodies, organizations—no doubt
all well-meaning but none-the-less keen to home in on the "moneypot"
and who are currently trying to piddle in that pot but missing
by a mile!!! EG.
30 years ago I was encouraged to put in
some sheep gripping on the wetter areas of this farm—which
cost me around £1,000. It gave little increase in overall
production but was healthier for the livestock. Last week, to
qualify for my recent ESA payments which will be cut back without
doing this, I was told I should block up the grips to increase
the wetland.
Elsewhere farmers are be-devilled by the
activities of English Nature to identify just one "interested
party". So there is a desperate need for a Europe-wide consistent
approach to these aspects of CAP Reform which are not cosmetic
and primarily designed to fool the Third World that somehow our
reforms will open up our markets to them and give them a freer
trading relationship with us. What I call the "Cancun confidence
trick".
21. One payment/one farm has long been overdue
ever since A4cShany attempted to bring it about. Farmers should
be husbandmen but at the present time a younger generation of
farmers aided by their wives are sending half of their time fiddling
about on computers, web-sites etc, reading e-mails, when they
should be attending to the well-being of their livestock, their
husbandry and the care of their farms and landscape. This is a
very unhealthy situation which the New Zealand experience admirably
illustrated. Farmers don't like to be called subsidy junkies,
as my NZ friend calls us, but alas it is true.
22. I would like to add that if Government
wants to help farmers—arable and livestock—without
increasing actual output, they should reinstate the liming grant
and phosphate and potash grants as well as a drainage maintenance
grant. Not new drainage work, just maintenance. Together these
measures would ensure that our lands are in kept in good heart.
No grants for nitrogen or compound fertilizers.
Mr GH Cole
January 2004
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