New voice for family farmers

By 2005, the government expects up to a quarter of the UK’s farms to close or merge. 50,000 farmers could be forced to leave the land(1). But a new group, farm, aims to reverse the decline, reinstating independent family farmers at the heart of sustainable agriculture in Britain.

The new campaigning organisation, was set up in November 2002 in the belief that organisations such as the National Farmers’ Union are failing to protect the livelihoods of any farmers except those engaged in large-scale agribusiness. Backed by funding from environmentalist Zac Goldsmith, farm is run by working farmers and its membership comprises about an equal number of farmers and consumers. 
    ‘Over a long period of time a group of people with frustrations about how farmers’ views were being expressed coalesced and have become farm. Farmers’ unions at a national level are too close to government and are therefore not very good at challenging policy’, says staff member Robin Maynard.
    The group believe that the crisis in farming, and the closure of ordinary farms are caused by a series of inter-related factors, including the steady take-over of food production and distribution by large agribusiness companies and conglomerates; the failure of government to stand up for the long-term interests of farmers, consumers and rural communities; and a lack of public awareness of the implications of the farming crisis. 
    Since the 1947 Agriculture Act, over 200,000 farms – or 11 farmers a day – have gone out of business, and the only primary legislation since then has been the 1986 Agriculture Act which created the Environmentally Sensitive Areas scheme. farm is proposing to draft a new Farm Bill that will:

• enshrine in law the principle of National Food Security: farm believes that relying on world food markets is unsustainable
• tackle market imbalances which currently allow the UK ‘big five’ supermarkets to control 70% of all grocery sales
• maintain and conserve farm diversity, rural communities and wildlife
• allow new entrants into farming: the average age of UK farmers is 58

farm has adopted among its policies the precautionary principle in respect of pesticide use and genetically modified crops.
The group was disappointed that last year’s Policy Commission on the Future of Farming(2) under Sir Don Curry, and the UK government’s response to it(3), collude with a policy of global trade liberalisation led by agribusiness, which farm identify as a root cause of the UK farming crisis. 
    PAN UK were also concerned that the Curry report did not directly tackle the need for pesticide use reduction4, an outcome which is possible only if diversity in farming types and systems is maintained. (AC)

References
1. Membership recruitment leaflet, www.farm.org.uk
2. Farming and Food – a sustainable future, Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food, Cabinet Office, January 2002, www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/farming
3. www.defra.gov.uk/farm/sustain/newstrategy/index.htm
4. PN 55, Roots of reform – a call for sustainable farming, page 18.

[This article first appeared in Pesticides News No. 59, March 2003, page 20]