Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
19 JANUARY 2005
MR PETER
KENDALL, DR
NEIL KIFT
AND MR
HARRY JOHNSON
Q80 Paddy Tipping: I want to talk about
costs. We have got a very clear idea of what the pesticide tax
would cost the sector. £25 to £30 million seems to be
the norm. I think it would cost you directly, Mr Kendall, £20,000.
What I am not clear about is what the VI is costing farmers. Mr
Johnson has just mentioned £50 for in a sense tightening
up a machine. What do you pay, Mr Kendall?
Mr Kendall: Myself—
Q81 Paddy Tipping: Too much, you will
tell me.
Mr Kendall: —No, it is not
because again I live in the countryside, I am in the middle of
a farm, and I have three very small children. It is absolutely
key to me that we do this job right. I have NRoSO registration
and I have on going training. I have two people who work on the
farm with me and they are also NRoSO trained. That means they
go away for a day a year and have days away. They are paid for
and they will be paid for those courses. They have specific courses
or they go to the sprayer manufacturers and talk to manufacturers
about new developments. That is on-going training. It is costing
me money for having the sprayer up-dated and monitored and certificated
on a year-to-year basis. We sat down before Christmas and did
our crop protection management plan as a group. When the question
was asked earlier on about how you get crop protection management
plans to succeed by being poor, for most of the four boxes you
have to be in the second from highest grade to be Farm Assured
to start with. However, it makes you think about better practice
so the whole time we are investing and looking at ways in which
we can improve our filling stations, looking at how we put in
a bio-bed when we can get the right guidelines on how we would
install a bio-bed. We are looking at changing our storing and
how our pesticides are stored and transported. There are significant
costs to us on our business. I could not put an exact figure on
it but it is a genuine commitment. We have also engaged in agri-environment
schemes to make sure that we are protecting water courses better.
The change in CAP where set-aside can now have six-metre strips
next to water courses is a really sensible and helpful move that
ties into CAP reform with environmental farm management, so again
these are sensible synergies.
Q82 Paddy Tipping: So in a sense what
you are being driven to is best practice and there is a cost of
best practice but you want to do it basically?
Mr Kendall: Again, I think the
point was made earlier on that my customers are increasingly demanding
it and I want to be in a situation where I can be a preferred
supplier. I want people to want my produce rather than wheat from
the Ukraine for example without the traceability and without the
environmental track record that mine might have.
Q83 Paddy Tipping: A few moments ago
you mentioned the Water Framework Directive and catchment management
plans. These are going to come and there is going to be a cost
in these. Who should pay the cost for those? Should it be the
agri-chemical industry or should it be farmers because they are
applying some of the material. What are the costs and how should
they be divvied up?
Mr Kendall: We hope they would
not be that significant. We also hope a lot of advisers out there
in farming—FWAG advisers and agronomists—engage in
this practice so it would not necessarily add a significant cost
to the current programmes that are being run. Again Defra have
quite a large budget and if it was a small amount perhaps they
could engage in encouraging farmers to change in that direction.
Q84 Paddy Tipping: Again you would link
it with the whole CAP environmental reform movement?
Mr Kendall: Absolutely.
Q85 Mr Drew: You heard earlier, because
I know all three of you were sat there, the question from Alan
Simpson about the potential linkage with certain carcinogenic
diseases. I do not really want to go into that again although
you may want to comment on it. I want to ask a specific question.
When Lindane was identified as something that was unacceptable,
what was the mechanism within the NFU of actually communicating
that you felt your members should get rid of any surplus material
as soon as possible?
Mr Kendall: I was not involved
at the time on the history of it but we have a very sophisticated
communication mechanism. We liaise with farmers all the time and
we would send that message very quickly, I am sure. I was not
involved at the time. My major concern is my safety and my farm
staff's safety and my family's safety. We live and work in that
environment so if I discover the sort of news you have just referred
to it is absolutely essential to get that message out and we understand
that if there has been something discovered that is to the detriment
of people's heath and the environment.
Dr Kift: As a person who is employed
to do policy work these health issues when they come up are always
something that I get quizzed very carefully about and I make sure
I have read through it and know what it means. People are keen
to make sure they are doing the right thing with products that
are safe.
Q86 Mr Drew: If we go back to the gist
of some of the early problems, with the best of respects your
members who are fully paid up and fully communicated with are
not really the problem. You have got those farmers who belong
either to no farming organisations or are pretty much tangential,
and then you have got all the other people who are on the land
and will probably never really have any access to the sort of
information in extremis. If we get one of these scares
which is proven, which in the case of Lindane we did, should there
not be a mechanism for saying there is at least sufficient suspicion.
I would not go into too much backdrop but this is the worry that
some of us had with OPs. There is a lot of circumstantial evidence
but part of the problem is what really is going on out there if
people continue to bathe in OPs, which they once did, then all
the repercussions we know about—and I know it is all to
do with genetics, et cetera—for those people who are genetically
susceptible it is not a lot of good telling them now that they
should not have been doing what they were doing. There must be
a much better communication process.
Mr Kendall: Defra have been communicating
on a regular basis with us over the last few weeks on the CAP
reform. They have an exhaustive list of the 160,000 people they
post all the formal documents out to. That should be a challenge
for the Government if there is an issue like that to relay. We
can relay to our members but government does have a record of
all those people who are registered as practising farmers.
Dr Kift: Also there is a new approvals
process in the European Union and everything is going through
that approvals process and so what has happened in the past is
so much less likely to happen in the future.
Q87 Mr Drew: But it is the stuff that
is already out there that is always the problem.
Dr Kift: Yes, and all of those
products are part of this review process. If there is an old tin
of something in shillings and pence in someone's shed we can only
encourage the amateur gardener for example to get it disposed
of properly. As part of the VI there has been an obsolete product
disposal campaign and that has picked up several tonnes of products
that were part of that first raft of products that were no longer
approved after July 2003. So we can only do our best and we can
advise the people who perhaps are not reading magazines, for example,
to get products disposed of, but I do not think farmers are the
issue with illegal products any more.
Mr Kendall: Again Farm Assurance
makes an inspection every year. They come and look at my store
and check all the products that are in my chemical store and they
know all the products that have been withdrawn from use that year.
Then I would have to take it to a specialist disposal person to
dispose of that product. Farm Assurance is now covering getting
on for 80% of the product so those inspections are occurring on
a year-to-year basis to make sure obsolete chemicals are not about.
Chairman: Thank you for that. Can I take
you back to the VI and the published indicators and targets. The
only reference to the issue of human health and the use of pesticides
is where it says that the issue is of well trained operators who
follow best practice and make best use of crop protection products
through timely and accurate application with due regard to their
own safety, the safety of others, and the environment. That is
the only reference. Do you think perhaps there is scope for the
VI to be a little more proactive on this? Mr Simpson made a point
earlier which he might like to reiterate.
Alan Simpson: It is this bit about the
Committee on Carcinogenicity saying to us that we need to have
much better measures of exposure. I am sitting here—
Chairman: Better controlled, not better.
Q88 Alan Simpson: The measurements of
what people are exposed to. I am sitting here listening to you
and I am thinking you would be my trade union and I would like
to know what demands and pressures you would be putting on as
my trade union to ensure that that was the case? The only things
that we know in relation to prostate cancer are that there has
been a 57% growth in its incidence in the last decade, there are
10,000 deaths a year, and it is now the second biggest cancer
killer. If the Committee are saying that there is concern about
the specific links between exposure of farmers and farm workers
to pesticides and herbicides and the growing incidence of prostate
cancer, I would want to know where you as a union are looking
for tougher measurement procedures in the Voluntary Initiative.
Mr Kendall: The reason I do not
think we need to have reference to this with regard to this Voluntary
Initiative is because Farm Assurance already has farmers recording
all the time they are spraying, so we are aware of those sort
of figures being recorded in farmers' documentation and we keep
those records for four years under Farm Assurance. When we have
been talking to the Minister for Rural Affairs, Alun Michael,
on the buffer zone issues we said we have already been keeping
these records and therefore farmers know what amount of chemicals
they have used, what the weather conditions have been like, how
long the farmer has been applying them for and those records are
kept for quite a long time. I am not sure we need to push that
any further and keep more documentation around spraying.
Q89 Chairman: Presumably the purpose
of those records is in relation to the environment so that data
is not being accessed by people with heath concerns. Is that correct?
Mr Kendall: I think the concerns
were health issues for the operators particularly and we will
be keeping those records and showing the amount of time that those
farmers—either myself or my workers—have been exposed
to those chemicals.
Q90 Chairman: I believe what you are
saying. I am just trying to get some clarification here. The data
is recorded and clearly can be made available but there is not
a health analysis being done on that. The analysis is being done
in relation to the product on the farm, is it not?
Mr Kendall: We also record all
safety protection, whether you have used goggles, masks and shields,
for example, and we record all the procedures we have taken to
protect ourselves at the same time. This has been instrumental
in Farm Assurance for some time now.
Dr Kift: Also you are right to
point out about the measures of exposure. I think Biomarkers was
something that was mentioned in our statement and that is quite
a new development. It is the development of the breakdown products
of certain things, and perhaps using urine samples to get the
measure of individual exposure. Those are new areas that are not
properly defined yet so until that subject area is made available
in a regulatory context there is not very much more we can measure
through those techniques. Certainly that has been focused on by
the RCEP and also to an extent in our statement. If I may point
out that the statement did suggest that on the increased incidence
in prostate cancer they are happy that that was due to better
detection rather than any wider environmental cause which was
increasing the number of instances.
Q91 Alan Simpson: It is still the second
biggest cancer killer.
Dr Kift: I am not disputing that
but better detection has better defined the problem rather than
there being an extant additional cause to new cases.
Q92 Chairman: Okay, I would like to move
us on to this very thorny question of the pesticide tax. What
analysis have you carried out to asses how much the pesticide
tax would cost if it were introduced in the way it might have
been introduced? You have some idea of what it might be. What
analysis did you do of what it would cost UK agriculture?
Dr Kift: All the costs would come
down to the farmer. If a tax is aimed at reducing use it will
therefore be targeted at the user. It would make sense. So the
figure of £125 million would be expected to fall directly
on UK farmers. It would depend year-to-year on which products
you used. If you had a particular year, for example like last
summer where OP use increased because of the presence of a particular
pest that occurs only once every seven or eight years, then on
individual years you might see a particularly big impact. You
might, for example, have had a 50% tax on OP products. People
had put those on to save 15 or 20% yield losses in some local
circumstances but you are still only getting £65 a tonne—I
am being generous—for your feed wheat. So the actual cost
would vary from year-to-year depending on which products you needed
to use. As an overall cost we would expect farmers to be paying
an average of 30% or £125 million a year if there was this
tax.
Q93 Chairman: Given what we heard earlier
about the—and perhaps there is a question in Mr Kendall's
mind as to whether this was true or not—I felt that there
was some acceptance that it was very hard to roll out the very
best practice in the round to everybody and that there is a difficulty.
Might it not be that a tax that could raise the sorts of money
that Dr Kift has just talked about which was then ploughed back
into farming directly could provide the intensity of support and
training and all the rest of it that could make the Voluntary
Initiative blossom across the totality of the country? Is that
not a scenario that makes sense to you?
Mr Kendall: I have heard the argument
but it does not make sense to me for a number of reasons. Many
farmers have already made significant investment to improve their
practice. On the diffuse pollution argument I have been to some
very intensive dairy farms where they have spent a small fortune
putting in effluent control and water recycling measures. I have
done some investment in my business, as I have said already. As
well as penalising those people who have already done it, it sends
a message to people not to do anything in the future because we
will rescue you with grant aid or specialist advice. The thing
we have generated through the VI is this sense of partnership
you have heard about before where people in the industry are coming
together to try and drive this forward to help ourselves and raise
our performance. It is not just about meeting targets. I emphasis
again it is about meeting what our customers are increasingly
saying they want.
Mr Johnson: I think that a tax
would be a very, very counter-productive measure. It has been
already described this morning as a blunt instrument. One of the
purposes of the pilot catchments and throwing this intense amount
of money at the pilot catchments is to develop a tool kit, as
we call it, a raft of measures which can be readily rolled out
nationally. We are experimenting with what works and what does
not work. We are looking at what works and refining it still further,
whether it is text messages or timings of application and so forth.
So in terms of taking the thing nationwide we are taking on board
the best measures of what we have learned in the pilot catchment.
What we have also learnt in the pilot catchments is that where
you have demonstrated a problem, as I said earlier, the farmers
are willing to participate to improve practice, so you have generated
a sense of community and spirit. The targets that have been set
for the VI have been looked at and found to be challenging and
yet we have found that we have achieved them so it is a pat on
the back for a job well done. And if one were to come along and
impose a tax I think there would be a tremendous sense of disappointment
that the effort that has gone in has not been rewarded positively
but that has been taken on board negatively. The way to do this
and the way to get a result is to have everybody working together
and my sense from talking to farmers in the various catchments
is that a tax creates a position of "them and us". It
creates an antagonistic position. What we have done so far very
successfully is get to a position where everybody engages for
a positive result. I think you can get the measures that you seek
without a tax. Some of these measures can be achieved through
economic incentives, through crop assurance schemes so if you
do not complete your crop protection management plan it is a failure
and you cannot sell your crop then under a certain banner. So
you are getting an economic instrument in that sense and you are
not getting a blunt tax and that gives people a reason to comply.
At the background also is the thought, "Well, I am doing
this voluntarily (although there may be some restriction on how
I can sell and so forth so perhaps it is not quite so voluntary)
I am doing this because I want to, shall I say. If a tax is imposed,
well, what incentive is there to improve my practice, to improve
what I am doing? Am I just as well carrying on as I am and pay
the tax?"
Q94 Chairman: In your evidence you also
speak about an issue of competitiveness but of course quite a
number of other European states have got taxes. Are they less
competitive? How would Britain's competitiveness be affected within
the EU for example if we had a tax?
Mr Kendall: I do not think countries
that are exampled in there are any different and in the same way
that UK farming is an exporter of (I will use one example) of
cereals, we have to be competitive against the French and Germans
in export markets. We are competing with them. I am not sure we
are competing with the Swedes and the Danes in those particular
market places. However it is keenly competitive and there are
lots of issues tied up with competitiveness. We always talk about
a level playing field. It is particularly difficult at this time
in this situation with the UK outside of the euro and with the
additional modulation in UK farming, to add another strain of
burden, regulation or tax would, I think, affect our competitiveness.
Q95 Chairman: If you had to compare a
country such as Sweden, which is levying a tax and putting it
back, and Denmark which is giving quite a lot back to farmers,
are you really going to hold that the Voluntary Initiative is
or will achieve more in terms of lessening environmental impact
than those countries with a combination of taxing and putting
the money back into farming?
Mr Kendall: I think it is absolutely
crucial that we allow the farmer who does the job well and probably
is the future of the industry not to be pulled back further so
we take money from him to subsidise the people who are not prepared
to take on the challenges and move forward. That is what we would
be asking. We would be asking people who are prepared to get on
and make the investment and make the changes to pay for other
people to get up to speed.
Q96 Chairman: What we are asking is that
you prove that this scheme is able to reduce the environmental
impacts of pesticides. That is the issue.
Dr Kift: On the hypothecated taxes,
having spoken to the Swedish Farmers' Union, I am not entirely
sure that the pesticide tax in Sweden is hypothecated. The nutrient
tax may be but I am not sure the pesticide tax is.
Q97 Chairman: It is a partial thing.
Dr Kift: So that might need clarification.
Certainly in Denmark where the tax has paid for a very much more
intensive advisory service, to a greater or lesser extent, the
development of the third pesticide action plan in Denmark, which
has only recently come out, has not made a major shift and has
acknowledged the importance of changes in practice. Whilst it
has not taken away any of the tax it now has acknowledged that
perhaps it is not getting the results it would like to get because
it is now focusing on changes in practice. I think I would highlight
the example of one water authority which was saying that it would
pay 50% of the instalment cost of bio-beds for farmers in one
particular region in Denmark. If they were really getting that
sort of change in environmental impact I cannot see that being
offered.
Q98 Alan Simpson: I can understand the
comments that you made about pressures from consumers to reduce
pesticide use. I just wanted to feed in a different angle on this.
Our parent committee, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Committee, recently concluded a series of hearings in relation
to water charges. We had extensive recommendations from different
parts of the water industry and from Ofwat and one of the conclusions
from the Committee is that there are a number of items currently
included in water charges that are really inappropriate. Quite
specifically, one of the charges that was identified that we reviewed
directly is the cost of clearing up agricultural pollution. The
figure that Ofwat came up with is a figure of £122 million
a year as what the industry estimates its costs of cleaning up
water polluted by agricultural contamination is. What is the argument
for saying that the "polluter pays" principle should
not be applied to that as an issue, irrespective of what else
we go on to do? Just in general taxation terms, why should that
be an extraneous cost that the general taxpayer currently has
to address but not the industry?
Mr Johnson: We support the principle
that the polluter pays. In our view the polluter is the practitioner,
be they the agricultural or amenity sector or whatever sector
is not doing the job properly and is actually causing environmental
damage. We would not support the suggestion that the polluter
is the industry per se because there are many within the
industry who are very good practitioners and through the VI, as
we have seen as time goes on and with the increased knowledge
of science the goalposts have moved, best practice has moved.
There is without doubt a change in practice and behaviour. One
person in the Leam catchment said, "There has been a fundamental
change in the way I think about the job and how it is done."
So those people must not be penalised, but certainly we would
not support any member or any individual who did not follow good
practice and caused pollution as a result. We think that the principle
the polluter pays should apply to them.
Q99 Alan Simpson: If you follow that
path through, though, it takes you quite close to some of the
comments made to us by the Environment Agency who were saying
that the idea of introducing carrots and sticks, incentives and
taxes, into this whole framework of pollution reduction is one
in which you could attach conditionalities, for instance that
you would set tougher conditions in relation to the VI scheme
but you would also make it possible for people who are members
of the scheme to reclaim their tax in the same way that you can
reclaim VAT, so in a sense you draw a distinction there between
the good practitioners, those who are representing the change
of culture that is the future of farming, and those who just are
not playing the game and no matter what you are saying they are
got going to come down the path with you. It does then differentiate
between the incentives you offer to those who are part of the
changes and the penalties that are attached to those who are not.
Does that make sense to you?
Mr Kendall: It seems to me to
be a cumbersome process because I see the vast majority of British
farming being part of the VI and driving this forward. If you
set a system up that taxes everything and then you claim everything
back again bar a very small amount that seems to me to be a fairly
bureaucratic way of raising a small amount of money. As I say,
we through our relationship with the Assured Food Standards Body
more and more of the Voluntary Initiative is becoming instrumental
in that. We have talked about crop protection management plans
being part of the Entry Level Scheme. I am quite convinced that
there is going to be a very large take-up of that. You will be
running a complicated scheme to chase out a very small percentage
of the market.
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