Speaking to a farmer friend the other day and he was telling me that he gets up around 4.30am to get his jobs around the farm done (he has beef cattle) and then, at 8.00am, he starts his ‘day job’ as a digger driver/contractor.
When the day job is finished, he has his evening jobs to do before hitting his bed around 9pm. Next day – same.
To run his farm, he needs equipment – a decent tractor and all the other bits and pieces for ploughing, harrowing, rolling, digging, moving feed, etc etc.
While he is able to claim tax relief on these purchases, he still has the capital outlay and ongoing maintenance costs, fuel, etc.
And all this before he sees a return on his financial and time investment.
He either rears the animals – bull and cow required – which he prefers as this allows him to manage the herd better and provides a better, longer term, investment – or he buys in store beef cattle and fattens them up for market.
The cattle need feeding all year round. In summer, this means out to grass with some feed supplementation, and in winter it is hay, silage and grains.
He grows the majority of his winter feed on the farm so there is a yearly schedule of planting and harvesting while trying to keep the crops healthy and weed free by use of selected fertilisers, conscious of the adverse effect some of these have on the environment.
During the year there will be the odd weeks when there is less to do around the farm, and he can take time off from the contracting work and maybe have time for a short holiday. Of course, he will still need a friend farmer to ‘keep an eye on things’ and these weeks rarely, if ever, coincide with school holidays!
Then when he does come to send some of his product to the auction market, he is totally reliant on the price someone bids for his beasts. He can’t set a reserve. He gets what he gets, less auction costs, of course.
This is the life of a farmer in this part of Cumbria.
A 16-hour day, 80/90 hours per week, 50 weeks of the year. Yes, he is able to set his hourly rate as a contractor – it has to be competitive, or he doesn’t get work – but he can’t guarantee what he will get for his farm produce relying on getting his beasts to market at the right time to get the best prices.
Life for the dairy farmer, the arable farmer or the sheep rearing upland farmer, will each be different in terms of costs, but none any less arduous.
Now speak to people in the street and one of the things you regularly hear is that farmers get subsidies.
Well, they don’t get anywhere near as much as they did when we were in the EU. In fact, recent Governments have given more subsidy to farmers for NOT producing food, for managing the environment.
The subsidies have, up to now, been paid depending on how much land you have, ie: per acre/hectare. Great if you are a massive conglomerate with thousands of acres – James Dyson, he of expensive vacuum cleaners, owns 36,000 acres of land and will have done very well out of subsidies.
The average size farm in England is around 250 acres and that is supposed to keep two people in employment (that’ll be my friend and his wife) so, the subsidies were far less.
But let’s take a moment to think about the subsidies. These were born out of French farming practices which saw the average size farm around 170 acres.
These were barely sustainable and many relied on producing food for local markets, where you would find the farmer, wife and family, on a stall each week with their cheeses, meats, vegetables and fruit, depending on where they farmed, not selling via auctions of middlemen to supermarkets.
As this was a way of life, the French government wanted to support these farmers and this is why they drove the Common Agricultural Policy from 1962 to provide their farmers with a sustainable living and to ensure food quality and security for the people of France.
In effect, the subsidy was the profit for the farmer with the product selling for less or equal to the cost of production.
Therefore, the subsidy actually went to subsidise the profits for the retailer and, as a consequence, cheaper prices for the consumer.
Even now, outside the EU, it is the subsidy that keeps prices low and the price we pay for vegetables and meat is dictated by three things: How much is available from British farmers and the cost of homegrown produce, how much we are able to import and at what price, and, finally, how much profit does the retailer want.
The answer to each of these is: the more unprofitable the British farmer finds their products, the less they will produce. After all, they can always lease their land for solar farms or, in the Lake District, stick caravans on it.
In terms of imports, do we want to import meat from countries that have lower welfare standards for animals (something that alters the level playing field for the British farmer), how much does it cost to transport it – avocados from Mozambique, oranges from Swaziland and carrots from Israel – and can these markets be relied on?
As for retailer profits that is as much as they can squeeze out of it. In their last figures, Tesco had sales of £68bn and made profits of £2.3bn. In the past year they claim that prices of their products had gone down by 12% on average. If that is true for agricultural produce, then how does that square with production costs rising?
But all this may be about to change.
The Government has asked Baroness Batters, the NFU president from 2018 to 2024, to advise on farm profitability and the early indications are that she will propose farmers relying less, if at all, on subsidy and more on actually getting a reasonable profit for what they produce, with Government having to make decisions about the production of food vs protecting the natural environment.
One of her key findings is that, currently, farmers can actually make more from NOT producing food. They can rewild (ie abandon the land to nature) or rent the land out for renewable energy production. She also said farms are not hobbies.
They should be businesses that make a profit or fold. Could this mean less local farms where they amalgamate or are taken over by bigger, more commercial, companies?
Interestingly, she also found that some companies, supermarkets amongst the worst offenders, of not paying their suppliers promptly – it is up to three months before they settle many invoices. That’s three months where the supermarket keeps money in its bank accounts accruing interest while the farmer is paying interest on loans!
This will entail significant changes to the way farm produce is sold with the introduction of minimum prices and a possible return to pricing boards – Milk Marketing Board, Egg Marketing Board, etc.
Inevitably this will reduce the profits for the retailer (and if you think that will happen, you are in some sort of cloud cuckoo land) and increase prices for the consumer to somewhere near that price that reflects the cost of production.
Of course, we choose what we buy and at what price. I don’t need avocados (I am a cat, after all) and my master and mistress, I trust, will buy locally produced and sourced seasonal products or those, like potatoes, carrots, apples, pears, that store well over winter.
In a world where the supply of food is short and costs are high, things must change for the British farmer and the consumers will see prices rise.
Of course, the farmers will get the blame, people will forsake the traditional butcher and greengrocer for the supermarkets who bring in cheap and inferior products from all over the world and, overall, we will all be worse off as a nation.
About Cumbria Cat
Born in Cumberland and, now, back living in Cumberland, having spent most of the past 50 years in some place called Cumbria, this cat has used up all nine lives as well as a few others.
Always happy to curl up on a friendly lap, the preference is for a local lap and not a lap that wants to descend on the county to change it into something it isn’t.
After all, you might think Cumbria/Cumberland/Westmorland is a land forged by nature – the glaciers, the rivers, breaking down the volcanic rocks or the sedimentary layers – but, in reality, the Cumbria we know today was forged by generations of local people, farmers, miners, quarriers, and foresters.
This cat is a local moggy, not a Burmese, Ocicat or Persian, and although I have been around the block a few times, whenever I jump, I end up on my feet back in my home county.
I am passionate about the area, its people, past, present and future, and those who come to admire what we hold dear, be it lakes and mountains, wild sea shores, vibrant communities or the history as rich and diverse as anywhere in the world.
