The question of BREXIT - British Farming

BREXIT – this is a debate with a very simple question but an extremely difficult answer as the same evidence can be interpreted by both sides to come to a seemingly credible and yet totally opposite conclusion.

This is because no one has ever taken such a leap in the dark, and with all such leaps you cannot tell whether there is a feather bed or a heap of jagged rocks awaiting our landing.

For agriculture you would have thought the debate is relatively simple. UK farmers receive more than £3bn of support payments a year from the EU, more than 60 per cent of our agricultural exports go to EU countries and increasingly farmers rely on foreign workers to staff their farms.  So you would have thought that of any cohort of the UK population, farmers would want to stay in the EU.

I am surprised that farmers are not more positive about staying, despite these significant benefits.  At a farmers’ meeting I chaired at the Bath and West Showground I asked how many of them had made up their minds one way or another and less than a third put up their hands.

The main reason I think farmers are undecided is that although they benefit from support payments and open access to the largest single market in the world, they also perceive that their costs are hugely increased by the regulation and red tape they must comply with to receive these benefits.

There is absolutely no doubt that the EU does create a huge amount of pointless red tape – I appreciate this only too well having to deal with the Rural Payments Agency on a daily basis.

However I caution those who think all such red tape will miraculously disappear if we leave the EU.  First there will be a prolonged period of adjustment of our own laws as we extricate ourselves from all the EU regulations which have become embedded in UK law and we may discover our bureaucrats are equally good at creating red tape as their European equivalents.

For example, it is not the EU that has protected badgers, which in the eyes of many farmers has contributed to the devastating rise in TB in cattle in our country. This is an entirely home grown law.

So although I am sure the UK would survive the leap in the dark, we would break a few bones on the way.  The big question is how long we would have to convalesce before we can walk again, or if all goes well, break into a gentle jog.

James Stephen MRICS FAAV
Partner
Rural Practice Chartered Surveyor, Wells
T: 01749 683381
E: james.stephen@carterjonas.co.uk