OPEN LETTER TO ALL CONCERNED WITH BRITISH AGRICULTURE
We have a problem. Please forgive me for tactlessly raising it at this optimistic time of year. But after years of trying to relieve the problem unilaterally or in partnership with other charities, I think it is time to ask all of you to put your minds to it too and see if as an industry we might find a solution.
There has been much heralding of the New Year over the last couple of weeks. British farming has come through the turbulence of the last decade; the government is finally recognising the strategic importance of being able to feed a growing population; and on the whole, the future is looking positive for many farm businesses.
Yet the fact remains that according to Mr Benn’s own statement in the House of Commons in December, 25% of British farming families are living on or below the poverty line. That is one in every four. It is a frightening statistic and one which I naively imagined would have excited some debate (or at least mild anxiety) within the industry at large. Even taking into account the sensible view that unviable businesses should be allowed to fail so that young skilled people can start new businesses in their place, the fact that a quarter of farm businesses are failing financially is not exactly compatible with food security or a golden future. And setting aside the business/strategic side of things for a moment, is it not actually a moral and ethical outrage that as a community we are prepared to shrug off the hardship of so many yet still consider ourselves a success story in the making?
Nobody at FCN was remotely surprised when the news broke. Although we help all types of farm business weather the impact of all kind of problems, during 2009 almost 50% of our caseload related to severe financial difficulty and insolvency - with predictable consequences for animal welfare, compliance, mental health and family life. This caseload cannot be dismissed simply as an inevitable result of the recession. In every case these problems far pre-date the recession and are the direct result of the cumulative effects, not only of floods and livestock diseases since 2001, but of decades of government neglect coupled with the imposition of costly and bureaucratic regulatory systems without any serious effort to help those families and businesses least able to implement them. Those who can afford representation or professional advice are well catered for. But what about the others?
In collaboration with the other farming charities and thanks to a few generous and altruistic professionals who have given generously of their time, we have many success stories where people have diversified, retrained, and/or come out of the business and have some kind of financial future. But there are countless others who would like to retire and cannot do so because of crippling debt and others who could become flourishing farm businesses again with the right help to turn the business around.
The problem is that for the most hard-up there is no consistent access to the right kind of advice. They don’t need professional advice from any organisation with a profit motive that comes before the best interests of the farmer, or to whom the farmer owes money. They cannot afford to pay for impartial advice from an independent consultant. While there are some solutions from excellent organisations such as Business Link, these tend to be short term when what is really needed is long term advice and ’handholding’ to see the problem worked through. Consumer credit and debt solution providers can generally not cope with the entanglement of domestic and business affairs so characteristic of many farm businesses and are generally not able to help in a situation where unpredictable cash flow makes an off-the-shelf solution unworkable.
So what can we do? This is a question which should challenge the whole of the industry and not just us at FCN. We would like to do more but we have neither the funding, the personnel nor the charitable remit to do what so badly needs to be done. And yet every day FCN volunteers are responding to people in real financial difficulty who need just this kind of help. This is a worsening dilemma and one which we need your help to solve
If you have any ideas for how we might, between us, help some farming families out of poverty, perhaps by providing free access to the best possible support and advice, please let me know. If you have no good ideas but are generally supportive of the principle I would be glad to hear from you too.
