Hello and welcome to the jottings of a farmer in Suffolk who, despite his best efforts is still farming...
As the world cup football in South Africa is finally all over and the television and news channels can return to normal (for a non-footballer like me, there seemed no escape from the incessant excitement of reporters), the thought of playing fields and how level they are across the European farming community comes to the fore.
For example, just before the recent UK election I was invited to a luncheon by our prospective Conservative MP and our existing MEP Richard Ashworth. Unfortunately I could not go and so I wrote my apologies and also asked a written question to be asked on the day. As part of the local party’s manifesto, he (our prospective MP) wanted to see an equal system across Europe for all Europe’s farmers. He called, I seem to remember, for ‘a fair deal for farmers’. So my question was would he campaign for a reduction in our modulation amount from the present 18% down to the French level? I did not get a reply.
We have launched into growing winter beans on the farm this year for the first time in 19 years, and also the first pulse since we packed up growing vining peas. The reason for this change is black-grass control as we used Kerb pre-emergence as a way of keeping on top of this pugnacious weed.
I also felt that on our soil type the winter crop would be more reliable than spring varieties due to the vagrancies of the weather in late spring and early summer. I now read that we should forward-sell our crop to catch the upward lift (what upward lift?) in prices because of the fact the French are receiving 100 Euros per hectare in extra subsidy for a pulse crop and after harvest the price might collapse/
I can also confirm that French farmers have taken the bait because on a recent drive through that country I saw many fields growing pulses even though in 2007 they grew nearly 50% of Europe’s peas.
But then we all know that the French look after their farmers better than those in the UK, even though they produce almost twice as much CO2 equivalent gas as the UK (95 mega-tonnes compared to 45 -the total subsidy for 2008 in million Euro: Germany 6496, UK 4066, France 9885, Spain 7365).
The French also know that the Dutch get a higher level of milk subsidy than themselves despite having twice as many cows (15,199,700 compared to only 2,923,350). The Danish think the Germans put an extra subsidy on their wheat exports as their indexed level of income is higher than their own. (129.6 to 81.6 for the Danish). The Germans know the Spanish could well be cheating the system of subsides as they have more olive trees than people (50% of all olive trees in Europe as well as 32% of all vineyards).
The Spanish know that the Italians are definitely cheating as they grow half the rice (1493,000T) in Europe despite growing more fruit and vegetables (12,153,000T) than any other country and a third of total wheat produced in the EU.
The Italians know that the Greeks farm more land than exists in that region (unless you include part of the Med). The Greeks think that Cyprus must be cheating the system as they are the only grower of citrus fruit in the EU and Poland knows that Europe favours the British and Swedish because we are not in the Euro and have seen our prices rise by 16.5% compared to their 17.5% fall. Finally, the people working in their glass houses in Brussels know we are cheating because of the favourable way the RPA have treated English farmers over the ELS payment timings. What level playing field?
All I know for certain is that the European Union’s greatest achievements are never mentioned on political grounds. We have not had a full scale war in Europe, despite a third attempt in the Balkans, since 1945 and hunger is something we rarely see and these are prices beyond comparison. I would like to thank Eurostats for the information contained above. Richard Styles