What would you say to DEFRA?

[kfpben]

As a (fairly) young farmer I have been invited to meet a group of DEFRA civil servants in two weeks time.

What would you say to them about a post-Brexit UK Ag policy?

My initial thoughts (in no particular order):

Any imports must be produced to our standards of welfare and traceability.
Access to overseas labour where required, if necessary on a temporary or seasonal visa basis.
Finance to be made available to properly costed business plans.
UK Govt to work their a$$es off opening doors so that our goods can be exported.
Regulation to be based on sound, peer reviewed science, not politics or the pressure of the environmental lobby.

I'm sure environmental schemes will crop up. Now I am fairly sceptical about these but I have noticed an increase in wildlife since I re-introduced livestock to the farm a few years ago. As 'greening' for any payment is likely to be required how about a scheme to bring livestock back to the arable east? eg. grazing sheep in the winter will give you x number of points. A rotational system with grass leys gives you y points?

What would you say to DEFRA?

 

[spin cycle]

get your hand out of red tractors arse

 

[Wooly]

Take a photo of a cow, sheep and chicken and start by explaining which each one is to them........I doubt they have been on a farm!!


You have some good points. Others maybe to get the labelling law more transparent. Cutting red tape......the burial ban, splitting sheep with teeth up, the otm of cattle needs to be removed, etc.......all of which add cost.

I do wonder why we push so hard to find markets to export our products and then replace them with inferior products from Abroad.

 

[DRC]

Not sure about forcing arable farms in the East to keep livestock, as surely that would just put more pressure on upland farms that can't grow crops. The last thing they want is a glut of more lambs or beef, I'd have thought.
Ask them to grow a pair, and tackle the TB issue.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

As a (fairly) young farmer I have been invited to meet a group of DEFRA civil servants in two weeks time.

What would you say to them about a post-Brexit UK Ag policy?

My initial thoughts (in no particular order):

1.Any imports must be produced to our standards of welfare and traceability.
2.Access to overseas labour where required, if necessary on a temporary or seasonal visa basis.
3.Finance to be made available to properly costed business plans.
4.UK Govt to work their a$$es off opening doors so that our goods can be exported.
5.Regulation to be based on sound, peer reviewed science, not politics or the pressure of the environmental lobby.

I'm sure environmental schemes will crop up. Now I am fairly sceptical about these but I have noticed an increase in wildlife since I re-introduced livestock to the farm a few years ago. As 'greening' for any payment is likely to be required 6.how about a scheme to bring livestock back to the arable east? eg. grazing sheep in the winter will give you x number of points. A rotational system with grass leys gives you y points?

What would you say to DEFRA?

I'd start by ASKING: Do they see their job as being to A) help and enable farming or to B) regulate it? Also, who do they think their stakeholders are?

Many of their current processes are not fit for A ago I assume it's B.

Then I'd ask why so few staff, both front line and senior, have little understanding of agriculture? If they understood us better then "policies" like "Making tax digital" automatic mapping updates from remote sensing and DEFRA "Digital by design" would not make it out of the ideas meeting.

As for your thoughts:

1. WTO rules ban this as a "restraint of trade"
2. Politically difficult while UKIP are still around
3. Great idea so long as they answer A to my question. Spend half the annual Ag subsidy money on a business efficiency grant scheme - 50% grant funding for approved schemes which reduce your marginal cost of production or add significant value to your produce, working farmers only.
4. I thought Boris was on it already
5. Great idea, again politically difficult.
6. Why? (I'm an eastern counties suckler beef producer )

 

[Breakthru]

No 1 Get rid of their IT providers. 98% of DEFRA employees would agree with that the other 2% do not want to give up their wimbledon/twickenham tickets or soirees to gleneagles etc. THERE IS NO CORRUPTION IN UK CIVIL SERVICE.
Is there Humphrey?
Ask them to go back to the old system pre common market of deficiency payments.
There will be a shift from sheep in the hills which we do not need to trees so ask for transition payments on the basis of reduced flooding of the loons that live on flood plains.

 

[kfpben]

Not sure about forcing arable farms in the East to keep livestock, as surely that would just put more pressure on upland farms that can't grow crops. The last thing they want is a glut of more lambs or beef, I'd have thought.
Ask them to grow a pair, and tackle the TB issue.

It wasn't my idea to force arable farms to keep livestock, just to have it as an option on the wildlife scheme/new subsidy scheme menu.

Agree with the TB, though I think at least this government are giving it a go. Of course that could be undone if JC and co get in.

 

[DRC]

It wasn't my idea to force arable farms to keep livestock, just to have it as an option on the wildlife scheme/new subsidy scheme menu.

Agree with the TB, though I think at least this government are giving it a go. Of course that could be undone if JC and co get in.

TB getting much worse around here, with four farms down near me that haven't had problems before, so I don't think the government are doing that much.

 

[matthew]

Not sure about forcing arable farms in the East to keep livestock, as surely that would just put more pressure on upland farms that can't grow crops. The last thing they want is a glut of more lambs or beef, I'd have thought.
Ask them to grow a pair, and tackle the TB issue.

Indeed. Or we won't have an export market to worry about.

See here:
http://bovinetb.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/brexit-uk-exports-and-zoonotic.html

And don't be too heroic over the farmer instigated, small, scattered disparate patches of badger population reduction. It's over complicated, over publicised and has let Defra off the hook for a while. The UK is the only civilised country undertaking zoonotic TB eradication to shaft responsibility in such a way.

And on the subject of trade in agricultural products, has any civil servant the slightest clue of what is involved in trading with the single market, as a 'Third country'??

If not, see here:
http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=86362

 

[matthew]

TB getting much worse around here, with four farms down near me that haven't had problems before, so I don't think the government are doing that much.

They are killing a lot of cattle. And that's all.
The excuses for doing nothing get more imaginative.

Trust in this department disappeared a long while ago. Respect too after the debacle of zoonotic TB.

 

[Breakthru]

As stated before an old boy told me that old brock likes potatoes but is allergic to aspirin. Not a big investment including the apple/potato corer.

 

[Goweresque]

You can say what you like, the whole thing will be a box ticking exercise:

Farming Minister: Have you 'consulted' the industry about how it sees post Brexit farm policy?

Senior Civil Servant: Yes, we invited in some people with dirt under their nails and mud on their boots and asked them what they thought about it. They ate all the biscuits and we still haven't got the stains out of the carpet.

Farming Minister: OK great, chuck the answers in the bin, now we can do what we were going to do anyway.

 

[Salopian_Will]

The trade deal is going to be a big influence on Ag profitability post brexit Britain. They need to ensure we do not get sold down the river allowing in cheaper imports that do not adhere to same standards. This cannot be stressed enough.

 

[Flat 10]

As a (fairly) young farmer I have been invited to meet a group of DEFRA civil servants in two weeks time.

What would you say to them about a post-Brexit UK Ag policy?

My initial thoughts (in no particular order):

Any imports must be produced to our standards of welfare and traceability.
Access to overseas labour where required, if necessary on a temporary or seasonal visa basis.
Finance to be made available to properly costed business plans.
UK Govt to work their a$$es off opening doors so that our goods can be exported.
Regulation to be based on sound, peer reviewed science, not politics or the pressure of the environmental lobby.

I'm sure environmental schemes will crop up. Now I am fairly sceptical about these but I have noticed an increase in wildlife since I re-introduced livestock to the farm a few years ago. As 'greening' for any payment is likely to be required how about a scheme to bring livestock back to the arable east? eg. grazing sheep in the winter will give you x number of points. A rotational system with grass leys gives you y points?

What would you say to DEFRA?

First paragraph is brilliant!

 

[Poorbuthappy]

I do wonder why we push so hard to find markets to export our products and then replace them with inferior products from Abroad.

I know what you mean but by the same token we'd all be driving Rolls Royce and not importing Renault etc.
If we are producing a premium product we have to find markets that want to pay the premium.

 

[kfpben]

You can say what you like, the whole thing will be a box ticking exercise:

Farming Minister: Have you 'consulted' the industry about how it sees post Brexit farm policy?

Senior Civil Servant: Yes, we invited in some people with dirt under their nails and mud on their boots and asked them what they thought about it. They ate all the biscuits and we still haven't got the stains out of the carpet.

Farming Minister: OK great, chuck the answers in the bin, now we can do what we were going to do anyway.

Well if that is the case I hope they have some decent biscuits!

 

[spin cycle]

You can say what you like, the whole thing will be a box ticking exercise:

Farming Minister: Have you 'consulted' the industry about how it sees post Brexit farm policy?

Senior Civil Servant: Yes, we invited in some people with dirt under their nails and mud on their boots and asked them what they thought about it. They ate all the biscuits and we still haven't got the stains out of the carpet.

Farming Minister: OK great, chuck the answers in the bin, now we can do what we were going to do anyway.

muck under the finger nails.....not the nfu then

if it were the nfu it've been....'we had the nfu in and they agreed we must continue to drive farmers out by combination of red tape and lowering subs so we can get larger agribusiness in'

 

[Goweresque]

muck under the finger nails.....not the nfu then

if it were the nfu it've been....'we had the nfu in and they agreed we must continue to drive farmers out by combination of red tape and lowering subs so we can get larger agribusiness in'

Of course they'll have the NFU in too, as you say they can count on the NFU to support them blindly, with the thinly veiled promise of a gong for the NFU President when he or she retires...............

 

[Wastexprt]

Well if that is the case I hope they have some decent biscuits!

Biscuits? I can't remember the time last I went to a Defra/EA meeting that had biscuits.

 

[Wastexprt]

Defra is now one of the weakest departments in Whitehall, hollowed out by savage cuts and chronically poor leadership.

In that respect, we saw a progressive descent from a reasonably well-intentioned Secretary of State in Caroline Spelman, to one of the worst Secretaries of State Defra has ever had (in Owen Paterson), to the ill-informed and ineffectual Liz Truss.
All the notionally independent agencies reporting to Defra (including the Environment Agency and Natural England) have had their budgets slashed - and have completely lost the will to stand up against Ministers. These are now client agencies of government, wholly captured by the current "small state" ideology.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/ne...nt_ever_by_no_stretch_of_the_imagination.html