What's wrong with British farming?
Everyone knows that British farming is in a desperate state. But why is it like this? What's happened? What should be done to help? Or should we forget the whole idea of growing food in Britain? John Watson, a visionary organic farmer from Devon with half a century of practical experience explains what has happened and looks forward to what should happen.
Governments in Britain don't take growing food seriously. They have an astonishingly blinkered approach based largely around 'free market' economics. These are the assumptions:
- because there are global surpluses at present, we can always import food at free market prices.
- British farming can't compete
- growing food just isn't of much importance in an affluent country like Britain.
Let's take a closer look at these three false assumptions.
Food will always be available from elsewhere in the world
This is wrong and here's why:
- Food production in staples like grain, meat and fish has fallen by up to 17% since it peaked a decade ago.
- Almost half of the world's food comes from irrigated land. This has depended largely on pumping water from natural underground reservoirs - and these are running out. So food crops could be declining at an equivalent of half the US grain harvest each year. Damage to soils because of erosion or industrial farming makes matters even worse.
- Global warming is, increasingly, making food production more chancy with storms and droughts, not to mention El Niño. The US has been the world's 'breadbasket' and over 100 countries now depend on it for much of their food. But grain surplus 'mountains' no longer exist and in the 1988 drought, the US could not even satisfy its own needs.
- China needs more food than ever. China, like Texas in the 1930s, has its own 'dustbowl' problems and currently 12 million extra people to feed every year. Because it has become such an economic powerhouse with an $80 billion trade surplus, China (like Britain) has abandoned self-sufficiency in food. It can afford to import low value food and concentrate on high value manufactured goods for export. In just 5 years, China has gone from self-sufficiency in soya beans to become the world's largest importer. As China imports more and more food, world prices will rise as surpluses disappear.
- As populations grow in developing countries, affluent countries like those in Europe, with no population growth and surpluses of food, will be faced with a stark choice. Feed the poor countries or accept that millions will die of starvation and disease whilst millions more will attempt to migrate to wealthier states. And people who have nothing to lose and who are desperate will resort to extreme measures to try ensure that they and their families survive: the prospect of terrorism is real.
- Industrial agriculture depends on oil to power machines and especially as a base for making fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides. Food distribution in wealthy countries also depends on oil. Any interruption in oil supplies spells chaos as Britain learned in 2000 when supplies were disrupted by striking truck drivers. Yet most of the world's oil is concentrated in politically unstable areas like the Middle East.
- Biotechnology to the rescue? Most unlikely since present genetic engineering techniques, largely aimed at concentrating control of world seed supplies in the hands of a few powerful biotech corporations, will probably increase the world's hungry. 'Old-fashioned' crop breeding techniques regularly increased annual yields by around 2%. Today it is half that as research money is poured into genetic engineering instead.
- Affluent people are choosing to eat more meat. This means even more grain which is used in fattening animals for slaughter rather than for direct human consumption.
- Food production could be increased - but at a cost. Cheap food (which we've all grown used to) will be a thing of the past.
British farming is uncompetitive... Let it die
The whole notion of a 'free market' is nonsense when it comes to global agriculture and trade. Both Europe and the US heavily subsidise their farming so that food can be exported at low prices. The US gives its farmers a staggering $102 billion each year, an increase of 700% over 4 years. Astonishingly, this is permitted under the rules of the World Trade Organisation. The European Union looks after its farmers too. It spends $92 billion, most of which subsidises production and exports, though this is to be greatly reduced.
The real threat to British farmers are the discretionary subsidies. These create an incredible handicap. UK farmers currently receive £230 million whilst Ireland receives £500 million (proportionately 8 times more), Germany £1 billion and France £1.2 billion. To make matters worse, other EU countries can claim back half their farm expenditure from EU funds. Britain can only claim 15%. This came about as the result of Margaret Thatcher's negotiations to get a rebate for UK contributions. As more support switches to discretionary subsidies, more British farmers will go out of business for the Treasury shows little interest in helping UK agriculture. No level playing field here.
Abandoning subsidies altogether is another option. New Zealand did this but the NZ dollar was also devalued some 40% at the same time. In the UK with its strong currency, the only options are support or die.
Many other countries have lower food production standards whilst British farmers have to operate high standards of welfare and production. In the UK, pigs cannot be kept in stalls, yet up to 95% of pig meat imported from other countries comes from animals confined in stalls.
Then there's foot-and-mouth disease (FMD). Because of the recent epidemic, regulations have become much stricter and this has pushed costs even higher. Yet meat can be imported into the UK from around 30 countries with endemic FMD. The lack of attempts to control these as well as illegal imports makes a mockery of the UK's Rural Recovery Plan.
No one wants to see more outbreaks of food poisoning due to Salmonella, Listeria, botulism or typhoid. Food safety is easier to achieve with homegrown produce. Imports of meat breaching British BSE controls have come from other EU countries such as Holland, Spain, Ireland and Italy.
Finally, there's the ever-present 'externalised' costs to consider. Fuel for shipping and air transport is tax free meaning that freighting food from the other side of the planet is relatively cheap and 'competitive'. Worse, fuel for road transport and farm machines in the US costs them one third of what we pay in Britain. Burning fossil fuels for transport accounts for a major part of human-induced climate change. Sometime soon, these externalised costs have to be acknowledged. With sensible international agreements on fuel taxation to penalise big users ('food miles') could result in a dramatic change in the competitiveness of British farm products.
With this unequal and unfair situation, no wonder British farming is in trouble.
Growing food in Britain? Why bother.
British farmers now produce around threequarters of the country's food needs. But now there's a trend towards importing cheap raw materials and adding value by processing and packaging. Exactly the same happened in the cotton trade - and look what happened to that. Soon it will be the finished packaged products which will be imported directly. What will happen to the UK food industry then? It will become increasingly vulnerable as it loses profits and makes its workers redundant. And does a developing country with huge debts, desperate for foreign currency and desperate to export its food products, necessarily pay attention to their quality?
Our prosperity in the UK at present depends largely on financial services, pharmaceuticals, the arms trade and a strong currency. It relies little on relative competitive productivity and natural resources. If any of these factors changes, a balance of payment problem and currency devaluation could quickly make imported goods, including food, much more expensive. Suddenly we will rediscover the importance of growing food at home. But will it be too late?
A US commission has looked at the effects of supply and demand in food. It concluded that small swings in demand lead to large swings in food prices. Uncertainties such as the weather, disease and exchange rates contribute to this. Things are much the same in the UK.
What will happen over the next 20 years?
It's not difficult to see what might occur.
- Some unforeseen and unpredicted event, trend or development
- Climate change will cause great swings in food availability and price
- Oil supplies could be disrupted due to political upheaval
- Drastic measures will be needed to curb greenhouse gases because of accelerating climate change
- Forced change to renewable energy sources and a hydrogen economy
- Major health emergencies linked to globalisation, food imports and new pathogens (some probably the result of genetic engineering)
- Mass migration and terrorism because of war, repression, inequality, poverty and food shortages
- Collapse of EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) due to sheer expense and because of expansion eastwards of the EU to include less developed members
- Loss of land for agriculture due to erosion and soil degradation, flooding due to sealevel rise, salination, lack of water for irrigation or desertification
Worrying stuff I think you'll agree. An antidote to all these scenarios is for Britain to establish a food (and energy) system which draws on local or regional resources.
What should be done about farming?
I think it would be irresponsible to let British farming slide into the abyss. In an increasingly uncertain world, Britain needs to have a flourishing farming community, properly supported and valued. The strategic importance of being as self-sufficient in food as possible was brought home with a vengeance during World War II. The U boat blockade in the North Atlantic was nearly successful as they sunk more and more ships bringing food from America to feed the beleaguered British people. Today, we don't have the 'dig for victory' but we must be aware that food is not only our most fundamentally needed resource but also is one of the few resources that really can be produced in abundance in our fertile and well-watered country.
To put farming back where it belongs, we need:
- a flexible industry with a young trained workforce able to respond to the vagaries of an unstable overpopulated world. Right now, the exact opposite is true. The workforce has an average age approaching 60 and there is almost no one taking up farming because of the lack of prospects and profitability.
- a
government committed to helping farming from within the existing flawed
but workable system. If we look at EU farm incomes, it becomes very
clear that this is not the case at present.
Farm incomes in the European Union
Taking 1995 as a base of 100, the overall EU average index of farm incomes rose to 103.5 by 2000. In Britain, it fell to 58.9. This shows that it was the British Government, not the CAP, which gave rise to this gross inequality. This is reinforced by looking at the total value of UK farming over the same period. It fell from £6 billion to £1.8 billion even though production increased by 14%
John Watson
Address: Riverford, Staverton, Totnes, Devon, TQ9 6AF
Note on sources:
Many of my sources are from two books
- Lester R Brown, 2001, Eco-Economy, Earthscan.
- Richard A E North, 2001, The Death of British Agriculture, Duckworth.
I can furnish a full bibiography to anyone interested. This article is extracted from information I have sent to a number of influential people such as MPs.
Read responses to John Watson's article: