Another week, another party conference – and despite efforts by the farming lobby still little focus on agriculture.
The Conservative conference was a bizarre affair, as members argued about whether the future lay in moving to the right or back towards centrist one nation Conservative policies. The right won out in that debate.
There was acceptance that the election defeat was inevitable. There was self-delusion from the 41 day prime minister, Liz Truss, who almost sank the UK economy. She believed she would have had a better election.
There was conviction Labour will be ousted at the next election, because the Tories are the natural party of government. That might be statistically true, but that was in the era of one nation conservatism.
As to agriculture there was no evidence any lessons had been learned from the loss of the traditional Conservative vote in rural areas. This was seen as a consequence of a massive national swing away from the party, rather than the result of years of faith being lost in the party in traditional shire counties.
Farmers have seen none of the claimed benefits from Brexit and in fact instead of being ‘freed’ of Brussels ‘interference', things have got worse and more bureaucratic. After a few weeks of political conferences the reality farmers must face is that no party at Westminster has any radical ideas to release the potential in agriculture to produce more food to improve food security and drive an export trade for innovative, quality food.
That is something the EU gets, with a stronger food security equation and a buoyant food export trade delivering a positive balance of trade boost for the eurozone and rural economies.
Brexit is a fact of life and that is not going to change. No major UK party has a return to EU membership on even its most far out agenda, so in agriculture there will always be a nagging question as to whether the industry would have fared better had the UK remained a member state.
That is an impossible question as the EU of today would have been different with the UK as a member – but the industry would certainly have had more political respect and a potentially more dynamic plan for its future. This month will be one of massive political flux in Brussels, with the nominees for the new European Commission all facing confirmation hearings in the European parliament.
This is a tough process but if all goes according to plan the nominees will be ready to make up a new five-year European Commission by early November.
Commissioners are all member state nominees, but their briefs and 100-day targets have been set by the Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. In agriculture she is sticking to her commitment from before she was reappointed to reflect concerns raised at the big farm protests earlier this year.
This is evidence that direct action can pay dividends in a European context. The likely new farm commissioner is Christophe Hansen from Luxembourg. He is 42 and was a MEP before nomination to the Commission. He has strong farming credentials, including a cousin who is Luxembourg’s agriculture minister; he has qualifications in environmental science and risk management and is fluent in French, German, English and Spanish.
The new commissioner will face fire fighting crises as they develop, although he will take over when there are some signs agricultural markets are stabilising – although that could all be blown off course by events in the Middle East.
What is interesting are the priorities set by Von der Leyen. His goal will be to come up with a vision statement within a hundred days that will ensure the CAP is fit for purpose. This is about reducing red tape and making the policy more farmer friendly.
There is a gesture to the green lobby with a push for new policies to drive growth in organic farming towards the EU’s unrealistic target of a third of land being organic by 2030. A third key priority is generational renewal to give young farmers better access to capital to make it easier for them to enter the industry.
This is an interesting priority, given that it is an area where the UK and EU have both failed to make progress.
Not a perfect agenda, but radical and demonstrates a commitment to the industry this year’s UK party conferences only served to confirm is absent here.
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