Written evidence submitted by the Agricultural
Christian Fellowship*
We want to address your last question.
"Can the proposals be implemented simply
and cost effectively within a short time scale?"
As previous reports of the EFRA Select Committee
have made clear, the answer in respect of the previous reforms
depended far more on capacity and management in the UK than on
the nature of the proposals. We have recently produced a study
of farmer: government relations at the grass root level, based
in part on an academic study and in part on the ringside experience
of Farm Crisis Network.[1]
It is a complex and unhappy story, but an important component
and has been the attempt to conduct varied and complex transactions
through separate routes, without relationship and at arms length.
The Commission document talks about wanting to "reduce
the administrative bureau for recipients". There is also
an emphasis on "Green growth through innovation which involves
adopting new technologies". On past form there is a danger
that this will be pursued by further rules and regulations, which,
when mediated through the current UK machinery, could be calamitous,
especially in England. (In varying degrees the devolved administrations
have a more relational approach).
The challenge of climate change, alone, will indeed
require big changes in farming—quite possibly not by going
further along the routes followed in the last 50 years. This will
need clear goals outlined in policy, but it will need flexible
partnerships between farmers and governments at all levels. This
will assist farmers in change adapted to their own circumstances,
facilitate sharing of ideas and experience, and allow this experience
to flow back to government and to influence polity. We already
have the example of on farm generation of renewable energy, which
takes farmers into areas of technologies outside their knowledge
and experience, in which powerful bodies push their own agendas.
We have to ask ourselves how a well organised advisory system
might avoid much misapplied energy and investment, frustration
and squandered enthusiasm, while facilitating much useful change.
The objection will be raised that changing the basis
of interaction between authority and farmers will cost more. This
needs more examination. Why does it cost six times as much to
administer current CAP payment to an English farmer as to a Scottish
one?[2]
Are we aware that in 1971 the entire establishment of the National
Agricultural Advisory Service was less than 2,000 people?[3]
The Select Committee will have its own estimate of the numbers
presently engaged in farm related work in Defra agencies.
There are changes afoot, for example, the recovery
in the RPA of the principle of a defined "case worker"
for each SFP applicant and talk of steering RPA further from catching
people in default to supporting them in compliance. Or there is
the deliberate conduct, by Animal Health in Wales, of statutory
duties in such as way and to build relationships, able to withstand
challenges and buffets. In addition, many of the staff of Defra
agencies, either intuitively or because of earlier experience,
aspire to another way of doing business.
This is a plea for a revised approach to lead and
enable change, allowed by Brussels, and applied in the UK—maybe
in the first instance in pilot areas.
* The Agricultural Christian Fellowship is a membership
body of people in and connected with farming. Together with the
Arthur Rank Centre it was responsible for the creation of the
Farm Crisis Network, which is one of the three bodies making up
the Farming Help group of charities.
December 2010
1 "An Unsafe Distance", http://www.agriculture-theology.org.uk Back
2
"A second progress update on the Administration of the Single
Payment Scheme by the Rural Payment Agency" National Audit
Office October 2009 Back
3
A History of the National Agricultural Advisory Service 1971,
published later and now out of print. ACF has one copy. Back
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