Memorandum submitted by Mrs Gillian Herbert
(RAS 10)
1. I have a degree in Business Studies and,
among other things, spent 15 years as senior PA to the owner of
the McLaren F1 motor racing team before becoming a farmer in 2003.
2. It appears to me, from a unique perspective
compared with those who have been farming all their lives, that
Europe is in terrible danger of losing the irreplaceable knowledge
and experience represented by those who have farmed for generations.
Farming is not something you can sort out by "sending the
troops in". I would have thought that recent experiences
with the results of the Iraq war, SE Asian tsunami, SARS and H5N1
bird 'flu would have begun alarm bells ringing somewhere with
regard to the vulnerability of not only this country but the whole
world to a continued, let alone continued and safe, food supply.
3. Policy is made by people who go from
centrally-heated home to air-conditioned car to air-conditioned
office and back again. Farmers are in the midst of the elements
the moment they step outside the farmhouse door and spend most
of the working day there and so much better placed to appreciate
how vulnerable the food supply is to the vagaries of nature and
disease.
4. If CAP reform continues to reward using
the land for activities other than providing food why should any
farmer continue working an 84-hour + week? Once the SFP ends what's
to stop those few who still want to farm ploughing up their set
aside and field margins to maximise any profit? If EU regulations
continue to increase costs by increasing the standards of animal
welfare and compliance with environmental restrictions and no
restrictions are placed on the importation of foodstuffs from
countries where no attention is paid to either concern, who on
earth in the European Parliament thinks anyone will want to farm
in the future? It's time someone out there stopped thinking only
about how much money is to be paid out this year and next and
instead about who exactly is going to be feeding the EU population,
including them, in 10 or 15 years' time. The USA is moribund in
terms of growth and China doesn't have enough land to grow the
food her burgeoning population will require as she industrialises.
Will she take the 40% of non-EU produce presently filling UK bellies?
5. High time someone started a little joined-up
thinking and a LOT of planning.
June 2006
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