too much money for farmers to fund - advise was it could take 10 mill plus to take through courts
Farm assurance - Do we want an industry referendum?
- Thread starter liirge
- Start date
too much money for farmers to fund - advise was it could take 10 mill plus to take through courts
Dear DrWazzock, yes I will explain, RT was invented by the NFU & others in 1999(I am talking about Cereals/oilseeds) to try combat supermarkets & other purchasers of ag products from carrying out separate farm inspections (before DEAF & RPA started to do so) in different ways & means which would have caused a lot of conflict etc which did work but sadly numerous committees & interlopers have gold plated everything so have caused the mess we now in. RIP RT.
Hi this looks good to me! Good flyer also.
Right. Seems like it's time to join then.
Tamar
Member
The reality is that farmers give more than that to RT each year.......so Might be cheap in the long run..............
- Location
- Lincolnshire
If the BFU gets enough members, and I hope it does, then it becomes a genuine incontrovertible stakeholder and should have a seat round the RT top table. I think it could do more good there moderating and reforming RT than it will do if it starts a civil war in our industry. The BFU has already done a lot of good holding RT to account over the GFC module but to insist on the destruction of organisations like RT and indeed AHDB that have done some good will not do us any good in the long run.
Believe me I can understand the grief and frustration that RT causes but patience and even some compromise is often necessary. These organisations could and should work for us. We just need a tighter hold on their reins IMO. I don’t know what happened with the NFU but they seem to have either “gone native” or been asleep at the wheel.
Believe me I can understand the grief and frustration that RT causes but patience and even some compromise is often necessary. These organisations could and should work for us. We just need a tighter hold on their reins IMO. I don’t know what happened with the NFU but they seem to have either “gone native” or been asleep at the wheel.
- Location
- Essex
The AHDB has has a billion pounds since its Inception.
Frankly we need something more in return than the old "working for British Farmers" line they all trot out.
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Of course we do. We pay them. Let’s be having some value for money. How do we even measure their performance?
I went into Lidl and there were RT logos all over the meat fridges. I was happy with that. Result. But there’s no RT veg oil can be bought anywhere that I can find. So why not? I’m paying RT to assure my OSR. So let’s bang on the table and ask why there’s no RT veg oil in the shops. That’s what would happen in any other industry. I’ve been there. As I say much we could do from the inside the highlight the kind of hypocracy that’s going on. But if we just end up losing these organisations and stoop to the level of imports, then I reckon we will have lost something.
tullah
Member
- Location
- Linconshire
Take the farmers lost family leisure time and his health (can't put a price on those) plus membership and all the other costs of the hanging in there jobsworths tasks and we're talking £2500 per annum for a 100 hectare cereals and beet farm.
Four years, and there's £10k gone to these up themselves who can close down your business, and all for what?
Waste no time. Join The British Farming Union who will go all out to bring these people down for you.
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Yep. That’s how I feel when I see my OSR struggling while buyers bring it in from abroad grown using neonics banned here. So what’s the point of RT for OSR. They aren’t paying us a premium for RT OSR grown at greater cost in the U.K. or even given shoppers the choice to buy it at a premium. But for me the whole damn chain downstream of us should be investigated for that and hauled in front of a government committee and it should be AHDB or RT’s job to do that. Then they’d earning up their money showing up the buyer and government hypocracy for what it is. Instead of that they are silent presumably because they are more frightened of upsetting the supermarkets and the government than farmers who pay their wages.,There’s massive double standards and hypocracy going on between home produce and imports and no premium for producing to higher standards. If it isn’t AHDB job to sort that out then whose is it? Shambles. And I agree, ultimately if they won’t do anything sack the lot of them.
tullah
Member
- Location
- Linconshire
The reality is the customer won't buy the more expensive RT veg oil in the shops. They buy on price. So what's the point in it? Indeed why make our product more expensive for the shopper if she's not going to buy it. No sale is no use at all.
- Location
- Mendips Somerset
- Location
- Sedgefield
Perhaps start a GoFundMe page ?
- Location
- Lincolnshire
The root cause of our higher costs and our disadvantage to low cost imports grown to lesser standards is ultimately our own government and also EU legislators which make harder rules for us and EU farmers while still allowing lower imports in.
So what RT and AHDB. should be doing is holding our own legislators feet to the fire to highlight their hypocrisy and either get as premium by law or let us produce to equivalent standards to imports. Personally I think we should have a premium over imports rather than go back to lower standards using actives banned here etc. One way of getting us a premium is to slap a big tariff on imported OSR grown using neonics etc. That would lift U.K. price and help pay for the higher standards government demands. But as ever there is silence on this hypocritical disparity and really I think that’s firmly the governments failure. Unless the government acts, RT is an irrelevance. So why doesn’t RT / AHDB make this point to government ministers and get us our premium for the extra costs we borne due to government legislation setting us at a global disadvantage?
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Also, whst government will say is that they are paying SFI as a back door way of subsidising our food production against lower standard imports while they are telling the public it’s for public goods. Well that’s not entirely truthful when foreign grow veg oil is still in the shelves grown using neonics and the public are still buying it largely unaware of this fact. The public are being mislead into thinking government policy encourages safe environmentally friendly food when in fact government policy encourages quite the opposite. It encourages cheap imports grown to lower standards in ever increasing volumes as our own farmers are only really paid serious government money for measures that reduce production here. If this wasn’t the case we’d be paid a direct sub for OSR production to make up for reduced yields due to government ban on neonics here. But we simply aren’t. And no I don’t want to go back to using neonics. I just want a level playing field with imports that do use them. Is that too much to ask?
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Quite simply RT are an irrelevance while our government allows in non assured produce and we get no support or premium to help us with that disadvantage.
gone up the hill
Member
- Location
- Devon
AHDB big wigs have told me that when it comes to advertising sheep meat that using British levy payers money to advertise sheep meat is fine as long as it increases sales be that UK lamb or NZ lamb, as they stated : It does not matter where the lamb comes from as long as people buy lamb..!
And you think they are worth keeping @DrWazzock ?
The AHDB are actively working against British farmers!
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Yes well the levy does amount to a huge sum annually. There is maybe some product promotion but also a lot of very mixed messages. The info resources aren’t bad but I sometimes think they could be provided by any ag college or even input supplier.
Is it worth millions? No it isn’t.
I have put out that poster plus one of hfd, cattle still some more to do.
