NI Farm Groups meet the Ulster Unionist Party to discuss the Farm Gate Legislation Bill

In February, William Taylor and Sean McAuley (below) from Farmers For Action (Northern Ireland) – on behalf of Northern Ireland Farm Groups – met Tom Elliott MLA to discuss the current progress of the Northern Ireland Farm Welfare Bill in Stormont.

The Bill was discussed in detail by the previous Agriculture Committee in 2021 whereby they scrutinised the Bill and asked questions including those from Stormont’s RaISE Dept (Research and Information Service Stormont), all of which were answered by NI Farm Groups legal representatives

FFA steering committee members Sean McAuley(left), Eric Lindsay and William Taylor (right) FFA NI co-ordinator meeting HSENI to discuss agriculture’s serious accident statistics.

Sean McAuley said that Tom Elliott, MLA for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. has taken a great interest in the Bill and its detail and how it would work in practice and asked many questions all of which were answered successfully. Tom went on to clarify how the Bill should progress from here forward and was extremely helpful in detail.

The Northern Ireland Farm Welfare Bill, if enacted, would return to farmers a minimum of the cost of production inflation linked plus a margin at the farmgate for all Northern Ireland produce. It also has a climate change supporting section.

Three of Northern Ireland’s new Ministers have been asked for meetings and the first to reply was the Minister for Agriculture Andrew Muir MLA (below). FFA, on behalf of NI Farm Groups, will call for his support for the Northern Ireland Farm Welfare Bill.

William Taylor FFA stated that “The current farm gate prices being paid virtually across everything produced on farm in Northern Ireland have long since been unsustainable and recent high inflation has brought this to a head. We are seeing farmers young and old leaving the industry at a rate of knots in Southern Ireland, UK and mainland Europe, all evidenced by the current farmer unrest you see on your television screens.

“The Minister will need to be strong and determined to help process the Bill through Stormont in order to have Northern Ireland family farmers properly paid for their produce, which in turn would create thousands of jobs in Northern Ireland, help many farmers to pay their bills and have money in the bank to deal with all that accelerated climate change is throwing at them. It is planned that the Bill, if enacted, should be an example and help farm gate prices across these islands and further afield.”

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A copy of the Northern Ireland Farm Welfare Bill may be sent by email to any reader who would like to have one.

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Northern Ireland Farm Groups: lobbying for legislation on farm gate prices

 

Northern Ireland Farm Groups is heading a legislation drive for farmers to receive the cost of production plus a margin inflation linked across the staples. The bill is now written and ready to go and supported by a large number of organisations and politicians, now Stormont has reconvened. 

William Taylor, Farmers for Action, Northern Ireland, (above) wrote an article in Farming Life* responding to one about family farms in Northern Ireland by David Sandford, chair of Nature Friendly Farming Network. Taylor stressed that Farmers For Action is addressing the only weak link in Sandford’s approach:

“Our core emphasis is to achieve proper returns for family farmers across the staples”

Traditionally family farmers since the Second World War have trusted successive governments and those ever larger food corporates who now purchase the vast majority of their produce virtually across the staples, but that trust has now broken down, leaving us with successive price cuts at the farm gate across the food range produced from our farms in Northern Ireland and in fact across Europe.

The increasing monopolisation of the food chain by corporate food retailers, corporate food wholesalers, corporate food processors and co-op food processors behaving like corporates is out of control due to their insatiable appetite for profit, starving rural Northern Ireland of money.

Whatever the outcome of Brexit, farming families will still be facing the same food corporates who, believe me, will do whatever it takes to pay as little as ever for their produce.

There is currently a legal route for legislation on farm gate prices to go through Stormont under EU legislation. When we leave the EU, will legislation on farm gate prices for Northern Ireland be blocked by a Westminster government susceptible to food corporate influence?

Legislation on farmgate prices would bring fairness back to farming families

It would create 10-20,000 jobs in Northern Ireland initially, followed by four times this down the line, address the balance of power between farmers and the food corporates and create wealth in Northern Ireland again; check the Gosling Report, ‘On the Eve of Destruction’.

Northern Ireland Farm Groups (some representatives above) are heading a legislation drive for farmers to receive the cost of production plus a margin inflation linked across the staples. The bill is now written and ready to go and supported by a large number of organisations and politicians, now Stormont has reconvened.

William Taylor, Farmers For Action

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*For some reason the link no longer works though retained on Farming Life’s website.

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Mental Health: a young farmer writes

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William Taylor (FFA NI co-ordinator) draws attention to Adam’s blog:

“A brutally honest account of a young farmer who went to university then travelled around the world for a year and has since been home farming – he is approximately now 35 years old. 

His account really nails the ruthless effect the food corporate retailers, wholesalers and processors are having on farming families particularly young families.  The financial treatment on family farmers by them is nothing short of a national disgrace that is now costing lives.

Stormont will perhaps get back to work in the Autumn and this blog will be used to support our proposal for legislation on farm gate prices.

Summary

A dairy farmer working on the family farm just outside Macosquin, Coleraine comments, “Over the years we’ve built up a reputation as an occupation of moaners who are subsidised by the government and drive around in landrovers and big tractors crying that we’re on the bread line. Much of that reputation is self inflicted in my opinion but that’s an argument for another day! Farmers are generally farmers by choice and so must take the rough with the smooth”.

He continues:

“Anyway, I don’t think anyone would argue that farming is a demanding occupation. Both physically but more so mentally: Farming is in the top ten professions for suicide in the UK.

“In a recent survey of farmers under 40, 81% of those questioned listed mental health as the current biggest challenge to the industry.  Much of this, I feel, is the time demands placed on farmers. To put it into context, I’m writing this on the 14^th May 2019, and the last time I had a day when I didn’t do something on the farm was Thursday 6^th December 2018”.

“So, back to 2016 when dairy farming was in the middle of the biggest and longest price crash in recent history. He recalls that the farm milk price in April 2014 was 34.11 pence per litre:

“Life was good. Money was being made. Then the crash. It started to fall pretty much every month till it bottomed out over 2 years later in June 2016 at 17.76ppl. Half the price it was. It costs us roughly 23p to produce a litre of milk. We dipped below this in January 2015 and never got back above it until October 2016 . . . So for 21 months we were losing money . . .  You may remember that was the summer when farmers were protesting at supermarkets. Many were close to the wall. Thankfully we never were, but we had to get an emergency loan from the bank as most did. Every month was a balancing act. Overdrafts everywhere were stretched to the limit. Banks were on red alert for the whole industry”.

“Ironically now, we are in more debt than we were then, due to an upgrade on one of our sheds in the last few months. At the minute though, I don’t give it too much thought. It’s a worry but not a big one. In 2016 it was always on my mind. Constant sustained stress for pretty much 2 years. We were losing money every day.  So. in the spring of 2016 I was carrying about this pressure. I think every dairy farmer in the UK probably was. We all dealt with it, nothing serious”.

He makes four points:

• Which is the area with the highest suicide rate in the UK, currently facing a ‘suicide epidemic’? Northern Ireland.
• Which sex is more prone to suicide? In 2017 over three times as many men committed suicide in Northern Ireland than woman.
• In which age group is suicide most prevalent? Men aged 35-39.
• Farming is in the top ten professions for suicide in the UK.

“So a man my age, with my occupation, where I live is in one of the groups at the highest risk of suicide in the United Kingdom. Statistically it doesn’t look great does it?

“In the meantime, Stormont sits on its arse, while men my age slip away”. 

 

 

 

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Food producers are short-changed while commodity speculators thrive

A Times journalist, like so many pundits, has asserted that any farm business that wants to remain viable will need to diversify. But as Richard Harvey commented, diversification is another name for starting a different business to replace food production.

He asks: “Does the UK really want to become totally dependent on imported food at a time when we are witnessing a worldwide trade war led by the power-hungry leaders of the major nations?”

As written evidence from the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board explained to a parliamentary select committee: “UK farmgate prices are closely linked to the global market because raw milk produced on farm can be processed into a number of different products, many of which are now traded relatively freely across the world”.

But the global market need not rule

(Most commodity trading now takes place online)

Some UK farmers are still protected from global market movements through having retailer-aligned cost of production contracts with Marks and Spencer, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose. A  Telegraph  article advocating a fair farmgate price comments:

“There are other supermarkets, however, that actually pay less for milk than it costs to produce”.

The article adds that the Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers insists all supermarkets could pay dairy farmers a price for milk that would meet the cost of production without increasing the price charged to the consumer: all they would need to do is to accept a slightly lower profit on the milk they sell.

As Northern Ireland Farm Groups say:

They have taken action, commissioning a draft bill making the case for legislation on farm gate prices which will be put to Stormont as soon as it returns to office. If successful it would return to farmers a minimum of the full cost of production including overheads.

 

 

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Only one group in Britain is acting on the danger to the country’s food security

Nationally and internationally eminent researchers and commentators are focusing on the damage done to damage the environment and human health by agriculture (example).

This, in a country whose manufacturing industry was the first to pollute its air, water and soil and whose armaments industry continues the process (see a recent study of pollution caused by war activity, during development and testing of hardware, weapon systems and procedures, war operations and subsequent reconstruction).

A country which could and should provide its own staple food is becoming increasingly dependent on imports because their family farmers have been grossly underpaid for many years by middlemen and large retailers. According to the NFU (2015), the number of dairy farmers in England and Wales has halved since 2002 – cause and effect.

As family farmers leave in droves each year we must assume that the country’s environment and human health will improve by leaps and bounds. Not so, their land will be bought by those largescale investors who have reaped the benefit of EU subsidies for so many years.

William Taylor and other leaders of Northern Ireland’s farming organisations have been actively lobbying politicians from all parties and none. Their August press release ended:

Farming families traditionally were charity givers, now 25%+ are living below the poverty line, therefore, denoting complete current Government policy failure. FFA therefore call on the Westminster Government to implement legislation on farm gate prices which would return farmers a minimum of the cost of production plus a margin inflation linked forthwith across the staples throughout the UK to force fairness into the food chain for farmers immediately.

There is now proof from University College Dublin that in the farming industry every new job on a farm would create 4 down the line and whilst farming is not viewed by Westminster as the biggest UK industry in money terms (partly the fault of the food corporates) it is the largest UK industry by tonnage handled, 60%+ of all commercial road vehicles haul food or food related products to give but one example.

If legislation on farm gate prices is not forthcoming from Westminster, such as that being sought at Stormont when it re-sits to sort the UK’s farm gate price crisis, then it will confirm what we all suspect, the large food retailers are out of control with their influence in ‘Democratic’ Westminster, the limited powers of the supermarket Ombudsman’s Office a case in point!

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Financial pillaging of rural Britain to boost corporate profits: NI farmers to take their case to Stormont

Top post on this site last week – and last month – was FFA’s reflection on Brexit – the farming facts from Northern Ireland (June 2016). Because of readers’ interest, the writer, William Taylor, Northern Ireland co-ordinator of Farmers for Action (right), was asked to update the article which is published below in full.

The EU was conceived in the 50’s after the terrible events of the Second World War by a Mr Monet, a Mr Schumann and others. It was modelled on the United States of America and had as its goal for Europe as the two PP’s, peace and prosperity. It has by and large been quite successful at delivering the peace including Northern Ireland.

All prospered until the 1980s when the large food corporate retailers, the large food corporate wholesalers, to a lesser extent the large corporate food processors and the large co-operative food processors, who behave like corporates, began to take over.

They influenced the EU ship in the wheelhouse, persuading them to talk the talk but letting the corporates walk the walk, increasingly in their interest.

In short, the hard-working family farms and rural businesses of rural Europe were and are being short changed in what they should expect from the Treaty of Rome, the Lisbon Treaty, the Maastricht Treaty, the Human Rights Laws and all the other EU promises to the people.

Article 39b of the Lisbon Treaty states that rural dwellers are to be properly rewarded for their work but this pledge has not been delivered.

Today, 50% (ie peace) of what goes on in the EU is good, the other 50% is now corporate corrupt at the top (ie the missing prosperity for rural dwellers).

Then we come to Westminster, where we have seen the actions of successive UK governments since the 1980s.

As the corporate corrupt EU prosperity machine started financially milking farmers and rural dwellers, so did Westminster, again due to increasing food-corporate influence, including the bankers, to which even Blair’s New Labour became easily addicted, although change may be afoot.

If proof were needed of this new 21^st century UK politics pillaging rural UK financially for the sake of food corporates’ profits, then look no further than the 2015 verdict by the Supermarket Ombudsman against Tesco. A few days after this, Vince Cable (Lib Dem MP in the last Coalition Government) was interviewed by the BBC and asked what he thought of the outcome; he summed it up by saying, ‘when we were in Coalition we pushed hard for the Supermarket Ombudsman’s office to have increased powers but also the ability to fine the large supermarkets but the Tories wouldn’t hear tell of it – if the ability for the Supermarket Ombudsman to fine had been in place, Tesco would have been fined up to £400million.’

I ask you what chance does a family farm have of getting a fair price for their produce against the financial might and influence of these food corporates both in Westminster and Brussels?

Therefore, the case for legislation on farmgate prices has been worked on for over two years in Northern Ireland and is shortly to be put to Stormont (as soon as it returns to office). If successful it would return farmers a minimum of the cost of production plus a margin inflation linked across the staples.

 

 

 

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