Reflections on Autumn Statement 2024
While moving my farm office earlier this year I came across a New Farmer and Grower (now called Organic Farming) from 1987, the year of our first organic harvest. Amongst some fascinating articles about farm woodland and dealing with wireworm, was an article about the organic marketplace by Bill Starling. What immediately struck me was that the prices quoted for organic wheat were between £200-300 per tonne. A quick rebasing for inflation gave me a price today of between £562, and £843 per tonne, in real terms, double what we are actually getting.
I strongly suspect that if I dug back into our farm accounts, I would find that our costs would have risen just as significantly, offset only through increased economies of scale, and lower interest rates.
Sadly, this is the underlying backdrop to farming life; it has led to farmers taking on second jobs, chasing scale, and reducing their workforce. The pressure that this inexorable process places on the family farms slowly builds up until it blows up, sometimes with tragic consequences.
The timing of the Autumn Statement could not have been worse for farmers. We have endured a torrid 18 months of poor weather, reduced support payments, and higher interest rates. Defra has struggled to inspire a new sense of mission for conventional farmers to get behind. The input-driven ‘feed the world’ post war narrative did inspire a generation of farmers; ‘public payments for public goods’ has failed to land. Abrupt and damaging reductions to Basic Payments are impacting on cash flows, which, combined with changes to capital taxation, appear to be pushing angry and confused farmers into taking up public protest.
The tragedy here is that farmers do have a vital role to play, more important than ever, to support all of us to live sustainably, within planetary boundaries. Organic farmers have led the way, supported by an enlightened global movement. We have been clear and steadfast about this for decades. And yet we too, are subject to the same brutal economic forces that have worked to undermine basic on-farm profitability, and low-impact local food economies. It is imperative that the Treasury does not derail the Agricultural Transition Plan, and that effective political leadership defuses this crisis. Whilst I am confident that farmers can adapt and will deliver the goods, we can only do so if we are able to stay in business.
