Food News:
A View from the Other Side of the Fence
by Farmer Michael Hart

It is difficult to explain farming, with its many and diverse interconnected sides, in terms so that the eventual consumers of its products can understand the many hows, whys and wherefores. However I shall try.

I am a small farmer (100 acres) in Cornwall, producing milk, lambs and beef. So where do I start? Probably the best way is to explain the problems facing this size and type of farm from which, I believe, most people would like to see their food coming. This is the small, personally managed farm, rather than the huge agribusiness. However, that agribusiness is where your food will come from unless there is considerable pressure, both from farmers and, more importantly, consumers, to help the small family farm survive the current problems.

The biggest of these problems is the value of the pound, which has two effects. Firstly, it enables supermarkets and wholesalers to buy cheaply abroad, regardless of welfare, environmental and food safety standards. Secondly, it enables them to use these prices to force down the price paid for British farm produce, which has to be competitive in the market place.

As a business I accept that I have to be competitive, and farmers also accept that they have no control over the value of the pound abroad. We have, in the past, benefited from the pound being much lower.

What I cannot accept is that the low prices we are now receiving and the bargains being obtained abroad because of the high pound are not reflected in low prices for consumers. Whether the food you buy is a cheap import or low priced British produce, jointly, both we as farmers, and you as consumers, are increasing the profits of food distributors and supermarkets.

For example, I produce milk which, twenty months ago, I was able to sell at 15 pence a pint. Now the best price I can get is 10 pence a pint, but you, the consumers, are paying much the same now as you were then. Where is the 5 pence difference going? This applies to all farm produce, not just milk.

How does this lead to a growth in agribusinesses? The answer is that, the more the price paid to f armers falls and approaches the cost of producing a 'unit' of any farm product, the more units the farmer has to produce to make a living, let alone a profit to invest back into the farm or even into the farmer's pension fund. Thus the time is approaching when it will no longer be possible to make a living on a smaller farm such as mine, and the large farms will take over.

The smaller the margin between production cost and sale price, the bigger the number of units the farm will have to produce to stay in business and the larger it will have to be. Given that supermarkets only buy perfect looking 'units', more pesticides will be used. To cut costs the farm will have to reduce labour, so you will find one person looking after more and more livestock. This will mean keeping the animals in ever more controlled and managed conditions. We find this abroad in the huge beeflots, dairy farms with thousands of cows, and pig units with hundreds of thousands of animals.

Before blaming farmers for farming the way we do at the moment, look at the way in which we are being forced into doing so by what you, as consumers, are prepared to pay for food and the way the middlemen demand only the perfect product on your behalf. I am not saying you should pay a high price for poor quality goods. If you want food produced to the highest standards of welfare, in an environmentally friendly way and to high safety standards, which I am sure you do, we can do it. The farms, I believe, which are best placed to reach and maintain these standards are the smaller family farms. But these standards have a cost which has to be reflected in the price such farms receive for their produce.

How can perception be changed? By what I am doing in writing this article, explaining my side of the business and then hoping you will reply. Only by farmers talking directly to Consumer Groups rather than the people in the middle can we really produce in the way we hope you want us to. I do not, for one minute, think we will always agree, but we have to communicate, or the only ones to profit will be the supermarkets.

Part Of Michael Hart's 100 acre dairy farm near St. Austell in Cornwall.
Contact Michael Hart At: Lanuah Farm, St. Ewe, St. Austell, Cornwall. PL26 6EW
Telephone & Fax: 01726 843210 or try his mobile: 07771 594237.

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