“Whisper it, but this summer has made life pretty good,” says Allan Bowie, the vice-president of the National Farmers Union. He farms in north-east Fife and says his wheat harvest in safely in, barley is being combined now and sowing is under way for some of next year’s crops – in good ground conditions.
Allan Bowie
Vice President, NFU Scotland
At last, the farmers have had a good summer to make up for last year’s wash out and the snows of mid-March. It’s been dry and warm, with just that one week of well-timed rain in the middle. Perhaps average farm income will actually increase this year from the pitiful £45,000 last year. In fact, a Bank of Scotland survey found that only 85 per cent of farms were profitable at all last year.
And yet, despite the weather and all the other difficulties farmers face, the productivity of Scotland’s farms has been increasing over the last decade. According to the Office of National Statistics, output from Scotland’s farms went up by 58 per cent between 2002 and 2012. This is despite input costs rising by 75 per cent. At the same time, payments and subsidies only went up 28 per cent and labour costs by 14 per cent.
Pigs farming is not subsidised
Yes, farmers receive huge public subsidies though the European Common Agricultural Policy – around £500m each year. Though it’s worth remembering that large parts of agriculture are not subsidised at all – eggs, poultry, pigs, potatoes and fruit. And the CAP is changing, under reforms agreed by ministers in June and due to come into effect on 1st January 2014.
The National Farmers Union is calling for clarity from the Scottish government over how the reforms are to be implemented in Scotland. “Detail on CAP implementation in Scotland is firming up but we need that process to gather momentum to bring to an end uncertainty and allow businesses, both new and established, to make plans for the future,” says the NFU’s director of policy Jonnie Hall.
Subsidies to farmers will in future be much more dependent on what they are doing for the environment. They will be paid according to what they are producing at the moment, rather than what they produced in the past – in the jargon, “active” farming, rather than “slipper” farming. And there will be more subsides for new entrants to the industry. The Scottish government is allowed some flexibility over how much it allocates to general rural development rather than direct payments to farmers and everyone is waiting to see which side of the fence the agriculture minister Richard Lochhead will land on.
Farming is a precarious business
There are so many uncertainties in the farming business that we townsfolk can only wonder that there are any farmers left at all. The risks are enormous. Even buying a tractor, at £60,000 a time, would frighten me. A farmer does not know what the weather will be like next year, or what the political decisions will be on subsidies. Nor does know the price the supermarkets will be willing to pay for his produce or what will happen to the cost of fertilizers or herbicides or feed for his animals.
So much depends on global markets these days – whether the wheat harvest in Russia is good (it is this year) or pig production is rising or falling in Denmark (there’s been a slight fall ). And a lot depends on what other farmers at home are doing. It’s a complex business. For example, pig prices went up last year but the size of the pig herd declined. The number of sheep on Scottish farms has increased as lamb prices fell.
The number of sheep has risen
despite falling prices
The sectors where there are most worries are beef and dairy production. There’s been a sharp fall in the number of farmers rearing beef calves – a drop of 500 last year. And dairy farmers are still protesting that the supermarkets are not living up to their promise last year to increase the minimum price at which they will buy milk from 33p/litre, the cost of production, to 35p/litre, which would allow farmers to make a reasonable profit.
But while the farmers have lost out, we consumers have gained. Instead of a third of our household income going on food, as it did in the 1950s, we now spend less than 10 per cent. We now live largely on cheap imported food and ignore the threats of food insecurity, mass contamination and a large carbon footprint.
I can’t help thinking we should be paying more for our food. Farmers deserve decent prices for their produce to allow them to farm more securely, more carefully and with less reliance on subsidies. Farms are the ancient backbone of our country, still employing 65,000 people directly and a further 250,000 indirectly. It’s a large and important industry and we will lose part of our character as a nation if we allow it to decline.
I wish our farmers a good harvest and thank them for all their hard work and risk-taking.