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DAVID GROSSMAN: With allowances for the motorbike
and the baseball cap, this is a timeless scene of rural Britain. A shepherd
and his dogs tend the flock, a partnership of trust and respect that
achieves results far beyond what either could manage alone. For generations
this is how the Conservative Party has seen its relationship with the countryside.
But the BSE crisis and the ongoing problems of the farming industry has
left the Tories anxiously looking around for solutions to offer farmers.
Much of the Conservatives'
appeal to rural voters works on an instinctive level. Just as well say
critics because scratch the surface of the Tory farming policy and there's
not much underneath. No mention of farming for example in the Tories' recently
published spending plans. And worse; it's alleged that what the Conservatives
do promise to farmers, the party is completely incapable of delivering.
SEAN RICKARD: Farmers believe if they
hang on, maybe there will be a Conservative government, that maybe will
bale them out. Truth of the matter is that we saw under you know eighteen
years they weren't baled out under the Conservatives and they're not going
to be baled out under a future Conservative government because there isn't
enough money to do it.
COLIN BREED MP: Well essentially it's all
promise and precious little opportunity to deliver it if we actually look
at what they're saying and what they can actually do are two entirely different
things.
GROSSMAN: British farmers have
always needed several pairs of hands. In Norfolk, the Wymondham Young
Farmers Club is having fun at a juggling workshop. The sad truth is that
most of these young people have more hope of running away to join the
circus than they do of earning a full time living from farming.
When not attempting to
spin plates, Nigel Frost has to balance his love of farming with the need
to make a living. To pay the bills he has a full time job as a groundsman
at a local college, his paid employment bracketed by long hours on his
smallholding
NIGEL FROST: A normal day for me would
be to get up at half past five and start feeding the stock. Then I'd go
to my full time job until 4 and then come back here and working right through,
some evenings it can be half past eight, nine o'clockish time.
GROSSMAN: Nigel isn't alone in
finding farming economics desperately tight. According to the government's
own figures the average farmer's income is now only 8 and a half thousand
pound a year, a drop of 2 thirds since 1995.
FROST: On the small scale
on which I'm on it's very bleak unfortunately. However hard you like to
try and work and however much effort you like to put into it, it seems
to be to no avail really.
GROSSMAN: The great outdoors brought
into the great indoors of London's Earl's Court. The National Countryside
Show is a world away from pig pens in Norfolk. This is the cuddly countryside
with bags of traditional charm, a whole Disney film full of well behaved
wildlife, four wheel drive comfort to get about in and of course a minimum
of muck. When the ancestors of these mighty shires hauled ploughs across
the land we had an agricultural sector every bit as impressive. Nowadays,
unfortunately, the once massive horsepower of the British farming sector
has shrunk to the scale of a little runabout. And recently this far weaker
farm economy has had to carry the almost unsupportable burden of Sterling's
rise in value against the Euro.
RICKARD: 40% of farm incomes comes
from payments which are set in Euros in Europe and translated into pounds.
If the pound strengthens, then therefore the value of their payment goes
down. So, as a result of a strong pound, not only do they suffer lower
prices for what they produce, they also suffer lower price...lower value
for their direct payments. And this is why membership of the European Monetary
Union would be of great benefit to the farming industry.
DAVID CURRY MP: My views on this have always
been very well known and I think Britain should be ready to join the Single
Currency, if it's in our national interests and if it's endorsed by the
British people in a referendum. So I don't think the policy of ruling it
out for a particular period is actually a good policy. Now what is the
impact of that on farmers? - the level of the currency affects the actual
value of the supports which are paid. It affects the prices of imports,
it cheapens them. It affects the price of exports, it makes them more
expensive. So, from a purely farming point of view, had Britain been a
founder member of the Single Currency for example, then farm incomes would
be better than they are now.
GROSSMAN: Among Earl's Court's
urban cowboys is the Shadow Agriculture Minister Tim Yeo. Committing Britain
to a Single Currency is obviously not Tory policy. But there is something
Mr Yeo could promise to help farmers cope with currency fluctuations
at the same time as fighting to defend British tills against the arrival
of the Euro.
There now exists a programme
of European assistance to bridge currency gaps called agri-monetary Compensation,
but no government Tory or Labour has ever claimed it in full.
CURRY: Every single government
has always been hesitant about this. The way the British rebate works means
that if we do draw down all the compensation, roughly speaking two thirds
of that is actually paid by the Treasury in its complex way in which it
happens, that the Treasury stumps up about two thirds of the bill, Treasuries
don't like stumping up that amount of money. And so there's always been
the business of prising it out of the Treasury. This government is precisely
the same as the previous government in doing so and any future government
will be exactly the same as its predecessors.
PLUMB: With fifteen countries in
the European Union, in every single case, in every other country except
Britain, as soon as the Exchange Rate has divided to the disadvantage of
the farmers in any country, the agri-monetary system has been applied.
Now that means of course there has to be a make up of money from the Treasury,
as well as giving the benefits of the adjustment which is money that comes
from the commission or from the European Union.
GROSSMAN: At Brooksby Melton agricultural
college in Leicestershire, the students learn how to weigh the herd. But
if they do become farmers the weightiest matter they'll have to deal with
will be the Common Agricultural Policy. A behemoth of a programme that
governs most of what grows or grazes across half a continent. It tips the
scales at nearly 30 billion pounds a year - about half the EU's total
budget. All the main parties agree that the CAP is in desperate need of
reform and has to be moved away from production subsidies which are blamed
for a lot of waste and overproduction, towards wider support for rural
communities, environments and landscapes. But unlike our friends here,
the CAP promises to be a very difficult beast to tame and given the Conservatives'
generally Euro-sceptic philosophy, critics question whether the party would
be in any position to achieve reform.
BREED: We all talk about reforming
the Common Agricultural Policy, and it's absolutely essential, but it will
only be done by consensus and by agreement, by partners joining together
and agreeing together what needs to be done. The way that the Conservatives
handled Europe in during their eighteen years of administration, was to
isolate Britain, to make enemies of the people that are our partners. That
will be a disaster if we went back to those days.
CURRY: If you're going to deliver
CAP reform you've got to build coalitions. I mean Europe works on a consensual
basis. Our politics works on trying to define a difference and then deciding
which option we're going to take. In other words it's a confrontational
view of the way democracy works. The continental system is most consensual,
because you've got majority votes in the Council of Ministers you've got
to build partnerships.
GROSSMAN: It's also hard to see
how the Conservatives are going to build partnerships if they go ahead
with another plank of their proposals. At Brooksby Melton college the
students spend much of their day making sure the animals are healthy and
happy. The Tories say Britain's emphasis on animal welfare and food safety
is in stark contrast to much of the rest of the world. A Tory government
they say would ban imports that don't meet our exacting standards.
BREED: Well the Conservatives cannot
continue to tout a populist line by trying to suggest that we can ban French
beef or ban other products which don't meet our animal welfare standards.
First of all it's illegal and we are trying to ensure that what we do
in Europe this time, remains legal and is correct in all its terms, but
also it simply will just provoke a tit for tat operation. Somebody bans
our beef, we then say we're going to ban your products and this will roll
on, much to the detriment of British agriculture. And our farmers know
that.
PLUMB: I think it's tough talk
to say we will stop importing from those countries, but you have to make
sure that you try to work within the rules, within the rules of the business
of trade and because if once you start saying we will not import then of
course other countries can do the same and say well, tit for tat, you know
we will stop importing your stuff, if that is so with us, so I think rather
than do that, on a fair basis, I think British farmers will say I have
nothing to fear, I am prepared to compete with other countries either in
Europe or elsewhere in the world, as long as we're competing on a fair
basis.
GROSSMAN: Banning inconvenient
imports could be seen as part of the Tories' attempt to drum out a populist
beat with its farming policy. Another example perhaps came the summer before
last when the party latched on to the public opposition to GM crops - all
great at grabbing tabloid headlines, not so effective at helping farmers
steer a sensible course through what is a highly complex issue
CURRY: We are wrong on this. And
I think we're in serious danger of pursuing what is seen as a sort of anti
science, anti development policy which could have quite wide implications
and I recognise that there are.... some of the popular press is baying
in a hostile way to GM crops and I think some of our policies are rather
inclined to..than find what the Daily Mail says and agree with it.
GROSSMAN: At the end of a fifteen
hour working day there's one more job to do before Nigel Frost can hit
the hay himself. He'll listen to any politician who claims to have the
answers to his problems. But it won't be enough for the Conservatives merely
to proclaim that they understand the countryside. The party will also
need to convince farmers that their proposals will make agricultural life
in Britain at least a little better.
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