gone up the hill
Member
- Location
- Devon
Firstly I would like to thank @Guy Smith for making time to see me today,
Hence to say if he gives up AG politics at some point in the long distant future then anyone that is looking for a top salesman would be very advised to snap up his services
Background..
Today's meeting was at the request of GS himself, the meeting went on for about an hour and 10 mins, also present was the South West Regional Policy advisor who I also had a meeting with about 2 weeks ago at the NFU's request, I would like to say that he is a very capable young man with his finger on the ball, he is a credit to the NFU and I would say that if you are a NFU member and want to discuss anything about WLA/ TB etc etc then please contact him as he will im sure be only too pleased to chat to you, many subjects were covered in today's meeting so I will try to outline brief description of a few of them ( from memory ) and GS's answers ( and also in some questions the RPA's answers as well )
NFU Membership:
NFU membership/income is verified by an independent source, income is about 1% higher than last year due to farming members farming more acreage so hence paying more sub, full farming membership numbers are broadly the same as last year ( around 45k I recall ) which they think is good given the current industry state, membership I gather is down in the previous few years but that is partly due to the fact there is less farmers generally, what has dropped quite dramatically is the countryside membership the last few years due to the fact that you do now not have to be a NFU member to insure with them.
One member one vote:
I was told by GS that he has NOT come across any other members ( out of any of the thousands he has meet ) that have requested this and doesn't see it as an issue, also he stated that it couldn't be done as there no way members could vote for a person up for election as say you were a partnership but only paying one sub then who in that partnership would vote, I sad it should be one membership number one vote and who voted for that membership number wasn't the problem of the NFU, GS strongly dismissed this.. hence to say we had to agree to disagree......
AHDB.
I was told that the NFU have put massive pressure on them and are still doing so and in particular the top team @PK ref advertising, I got the Feeling that GS is not convinced about the value of spending levy payers money on advertising due to questions about the value of £ for £ spent on it, what is of grave concern all agreed is the fact the Government has slashed Defra's budget for the next for years and will try and shift some of their work onto the AHDB, the TB advisory service being the first example and it was made clear by GS that either the AHDB fund work like this or else this work will not get carried out by anyone but I can see that the NFU will have to fight hard to ensure that not a large % of the AHDB's levy money get used in this way from unrelenting pressure from Defra etc,
The RPA advisor made a good point that the AHDB needs to engage much more with levy payers and explain their work and how the board is spending the levy money and that this needs to be done yearly, ( with a meeting planned for the SW in DEC 2015 at Exeter,
Farm Assurance,
Both the RPA and GS made a robust defence of the NFU's response to this issue, they believe that WLA can be justified as it does add value to the farmgate price by around 12/14% ( AHDB figures ) I made it very clear that this was not the case and the NFU must work much harder in calling the RT quango to account and not agree to ever increasing new rules like WLA etc unless they get something in return ( ie remove a rule elsewhere ), they did agree that the NFU should be doing this but I personally don't believe it will happen,
A NFU members forum,
This subject did get GS all but jumping out of his chair....
The RPA did agree with me two weeks ago that this could be a good idea and needed more investigation, today both GS and the RPA said that they have not had one member other than myself suggest/ talk about having a forum out of the many of members that they meet and thus was not an issue that needed to be discussed, GS believes that they do enough on this front already and that Twitter/ the NFU website/ facebook page ( the most popular ) is more than enough and that it would be too costly for a NFU only members forum so therefore the issue wasn't up orr discussion..
Minette Batters TB statement two weeks ago,
Apparently she never made this statement and that it was misquoted by another TFF member about part of a statement she did make and what the badger trust had stated ( basically this member somehow joined up the two statements by accident )
In summary..............................................
It was a very usefull meeting but I fear that much pressure will need to be put on the NFU about things like One member one vote as whilst the regions seem quite open minded to possible change, head office are not...
I also felt that the Eastern/ Northern regions have a lot more power/ say than places like the South/ SW on issues like Pre movement testing/ WLA assurance etc etc..
I would like to say that whilst GS accepts that TB is a massive issue for farmers I feel he doesn't quite understand just how badly the ever increasing movement rules affect cattle farmers and im deeply concerned about a couple of comments that were made about TB transmission routes..
Hence to say if he gives up AG politics at some point in the long distant future then anyone that is looking for a top salesman would be very advised to snap up his services
Background..
Today's meeting was at the request of GS himself, the meeting went on for about an hour and 10 mins, also present was the South West Regional Policy advisor who I also had a meeting with about 2 weeks ago at the NFU's request, I would like to say that he is a very capable young man with his finger on the ball, he is a credit to the NFU and I would say that if you are a NFU member and want to discuss anything about WLA/ TB etc etc then please contact him as he will im sure be only too pleased to chat to you, many subjects were covered in today's meeting so I will try to outline brief description of a few of them ( from memory ) and GS's answers ( and also in some questions the RPA's answers as well )
NFU Membership:
NFU membership/income is verified by an independent source, income is about 1% higher than last year due to farming members farming more acreage so hence paying more sub, full farming membership numbers are broadly the same as last year ( around 45k I recall ) which they think is good given the current industry state, membership I gather is down in the previous few years but that is partly due to the fact there is less farmers generally, what has dropped quite dramatically is the countryside membership the last few years due to the fact that you do now not have to be a NFU member to insure with them.
One member one vote:
I was told by GS that he has NOT come across any other members ( out of any of the thousands he has meet ) that have requested this and doesn't see it as an issue, also he stated that it couldn't be done as there no way members could vote for a person up for election as say you were a partnership but only paying one sub then who in that partnership would vote, I sad it should be one membership number one vote and who voted for that membership number wasn't the problem of the NFU, GS strongly dismissed this.. hence to say we had to agree to disagree......
AHDB.
I was told that the NFU have put massive pressure on them and are still doing so and in particular the top team @PK ref advertising, I got the Feeling that GS is not convinced about the value of spending levy payers money on advertising due to questions about the value of £ for £ spent on it, what is of grave concern all agreed is the fact the Government has slashed Defra's budget for the next for years and will try and shift some of their work onto the AHDB, the TB advisory service being the first example and it was made clear by GS that either the AHDB fund work like this or else this work will not get carried out by anyone but I can see that the NFU will have to fight hard to ensure that not a large % of the AHDB's levy money get used in this way from unrelenting pressure from Defra etc,
The RPA advisor made a good point that the AHDB needs to engage much more with levy payers and explain their work and how the board is spending the levy money and that this needs to be done yearly, ( with a meeting planned for the SW in DEC 2015 at Exeter,
Farm Assurance,
Both the RPA and GS made a robust defence of the NFU's response to this issue, they believe that WLA can be justified as it does add value to the farmgate price by around 12/14% ( AHDB figures ) I made it very clear that this was not the case and the NFU must work much harder in calling the RT quango to account and not agree to ever increasing new rules like WLA etc unless they get something in return ( ie remove a rule elsewhere ), they did agree that the NFU should be doing this but I personally don't believe it will happen,
A NFU members forum,
This subject did get GS all but jumping out of his chair....
The RPA did agree with me two weeks ago that this could be a good idea and needed more investigation, today both GS and the RPA said that they have not had one member other than myself suggest/ talk about having a forum out of the many of members that they meet and thus was not an issue that needed to be discussed, GS believes that they do enough on this front already and that Twitter/ the NFU website/ facebook page ( the most popular ) is more than enough and that it would be too costly for a NFU only members forum so therefore the issue wasn't up orr discussion..
Minette Batters TB statement two weeks ago,
Apparently she never made this statement and that it was misquoted by another TFF member about part of a statement she did make and what the badger trust had stated ( basically this member somehow joined up the two statements by accident )
In summary..............................................
It was a very usefull meeting but I fear that much pressure will need to be put on the NFU about things like One member one vote as whilst the regions seem quite open minded to possible change, head office are not...
I also felt that the Eastern/ Northern regions have a lot more power/ say than places like the South/ SW on issues like Pre movement testing/ WLA assurance etc etc..
I would like to say that whilst GS accepts that TB is a massive issue for farmers I feel he doesn't quite understand just how badly the ever increasing movement rules affect cattle farmers and im deeply concerned about a couple of comments that were made about TB transmission routes..
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