Memorandum submitted by Roger James (RAS
32)
1. I am 46 years old and farm in Mid Wales
along with my wife and young family.
2. BRIEF HISTORY
I left school at 16 with two O Levels and a
few CSE's. I went into mechanical engineering doing a four year
Apprenticeship. I passed as a Machine Tool Fitter. My spare time
was taken up with the livestock at home and also doing some agri-contracting.
At 20, myself and two brothers started an agri-contracting business
doing mainly fencing, harvest work, ploughing, draining and digger
work. The partnership brought a 250 acre welsh hill farm in 1984,
in 1986 I moved and took on a 310 acre share farming enterprise
and I rented a further 200 acres in 1988. I was finding it increasingly
difficult to farm and work with my brothers so in 1995 I sold
my share of the contracting business and purchased a 120 acre
tenanted farm. This is still rented out. My wife and I are currently
running 1,000 breeding ewes, rearing 1,500 lambs with 500 suckler
cows and their calves.
3. FUTURE VISION
I strongly feel that without subsidies there
will not be a future for the livestock industry, especially in
the hill areas where I live, very few youngsters will become livestock
farmers. I feel that there needs to be a retirement system to
pension off the old farmers. This will enable the younger ones
that want to farm a chance of doing so. The old farmers should
not be able to claim their pension as well as claiming subsides.
This would release land for the youngsters. The "Them and
Us" attitude has to go, and we should all be working towards
the future interest of agriculture and the rural economy, we should
feel proud to be farmers and not pitied. If it continues as it
is, I won't see my son farming he will have a proper job (his
words not mine).
June 2006
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