Seventy years after the end of rationing, politicians still fail to value food security as farms face crippling taxes and chronic under-investment
The Fourth of July is best known as American Independence Day – few people remember or know that it is the same date that wartime rationing finished in 1954. It was a significant date for the nation, but as Father Time has ticked away, there are fewer and fewer people who remember just what food shortages were – and how they affected the whole country.
I am so tired of the past few decades, with succesive governments merely paying lip service to the words ‘food security’. In fact, this current government even had the words Food Security is National Security in its manifesto.
Actions speak louder than words, though. Some of the Labour policy is good, particularly that around protecting our high welfare and food standards on recent trade deals. I just hope that, as times moves on, lower standard products don’t creep their way onto our shelves. But there seems to be very little political appetite for real food security with domestic food production.
Remember the food
With the unrest in today’s geo-political world, and the inevitable threat to food production from a changing climate, food security should be far higher up the pecking order of government policy. It was Winston Churchill who said: “Food security is the front line of any nation” as he faced the reality of a nation starving during World War Two.
Our modern problem is the lack of long-term investment in the industry. It is the bedrock which could give us a thriving domestic food industry. The planning system puts up too many barriers and costs, and then there is government policy. A real cut in the agricultural budget announced in the chancellor’s spending review does nothing to inspire food production. Local policymakers working on nature and landscape recovery have to be reminded they need to include food production.
IHT rumbles on
Then there’s the government policy on inheritance tax: it is not only choking the industry but preventing large-scale investments. Why would you put money into a business only to see it heavily taxed when it passes to the next generation?
Ironically, inheritance tax has caught the older generation in the eye of the storm, with no clear way out. This is the same generation that helped their forebears bring the country out of rationing – and later embraced modern agricultural techniques to deliver the food security we have enjoyed for more than 50 years.
Now, after years of being told to “keep your assets until you die,” they are, in some cases, facing tax bills well in excess of a million pounds. Ask yourself: should this generation, people who have spent their lives feeding the nation, have to spend their twilight years worrying about this policy – many seeing the break-up of the family farm as the only way out?
A slow wheel
So what does the industry need? Confidence – confidence in government, in the marketplace, and in the consumer. I fear we only have one of these at the moment.
As I write this, it’s been reported that another 200 dairy farmers were lost in the past year.
The reporter asked why, when milk prices appear fairly stable. The real reason is a chronic lack of investment, driven by poor returns and poor policy over more than a decade, which has left farmers with little faith in the future. Agriculture is a very slow wheel to turn – decisions made today can take years to bear fruit.
I only hope policymakers realise this before it becomes impossible to steer that wheel back towards food production.
Tim Gelfs, Dorset NFU chairman
