Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Memorandum submitted by Hugo Marfleet (RAS 22)

  1.  I have been involved in British Agriculture as a farmer for 13 years. I started off a specialist pig operation for a breeding company growing their breeding stock. That business has now ceased together with its relevant staff due to environmental and financial pressures. We limp on with arable farming and have set up a free range poultry business supplying eggs to a major packer. Still the future looks bleak. We are now looking at farm diversity in terms of a farm tourist attraction. In the research for the farm tourist attraction I have travelled the length and breadth of the country. The one thing that is absolutely apparent is that the countryside is a wonderful, green and pleasant land. The UK towns and cities are an eyesore and litter haven. BUT as those people commute to their second homes, or the seaside, or the country retreats for leisure, they all go through England's wonderful countryside. We saw a huge knock-on effect when we had foot and mouth in this country and the damage in the tourist industry. We still have this effect today with possible Avian Influenza. The bottom line is you need grazing animals to graze all the grazing land and arable farmers to farm the arable land. Therefore the grazing animals and the poultry industry require feed. If we do not have livestock because it is uneconomical to obtain a living from having livestock it only gets transferred to outside European countries, ie Brazil, and the damage to the environment of bringing a cow, which will have the same effect whether it is living here or in Brazil in unnecessary food miles. It is in these times with issues like global warming that we need to start to change to a local policy. Agriculture is green as it is and it has a negative carbon relationship. There is no reason why the UK agricultural industry cannot provide for the environment a decent living and, most of all, put good wholesome food on the consumers' plate. However, if the supermarkets do not promote these benefits, and only promotes is own benefits for cheap cuts, then, in the end, the UK agricultural industry will be like the dinosaurs, slowly dying a death.

  2.  We have now gone into mad extreme policies whereby middleclass management are dictating policies when they have never been on a farm, near a farm and know nothing about farming, and are creating a situation of extreme administration whereby to ask yourself a basic question "can I spread farmyard manure on set aside" one has to trail through four to five books to potentially find an answer. These people create more to keep themselves in a job. If all this people were told "come up with some good ideas on farming don't try and kill it off" we might be in a better way. As Beecham said "shut the railways down that will save us money"—anybody could say why not come up with a sensible package and take it forward—that is harder but better in the long term.

  3.  The big question is "does UK agriculture want family run businesses that have great attention to detail for both stock, environment, or, large agri-businesses where profit will override everything and, if there is not any profit they will walk".

June 2006





 
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