From fragile supply chains to frozen farm budgets, Tim Gelfs says NFU conference laid bare the gap between rhetoric and delivery
Fresh back from NFU conference in Birmingham, I thought I’d share some of the highlights, and my thoughts on some of the speeches.
Now, I know that the NFU isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, and not everyone agrees with the direction of travel at times. But – and this is a big BUT! … Who else? The NFU is entwined everywhere that can have an influence on our rural businesses, from local branch level to Westminster. The union even still has policy influence with an office in Brussels. The infrastructure and the specialist knowledge in the teams is second to none.
This was borne out by the quality of speakers attracted to conference – there are not many that would get the Secretary of State and the Farming Minister in the room at the same time!
The theme at conference was resilience, and first up was Professor Tim Lang to set the scene. He talked about our fragile food system, built on an infrastructure of ‘just in time’, when we should be moving to a ‘just in case’.
With so much happening around the world, be it climate, disease or some trigger happy global power, Tim posed the question “if it all went wrong tomorrow, could we all feed our local community?” The short answer is ‘probably not’. If the lorries stopped rolling in to the large retail distribution outlets, it wouldn’t take long for the shelves to empty.
One striking question from the floor was on food security: “Do the government understand what it means?” His one-word answer? “NO.”
Filled with frustration, it was clear he’d been here before and got the t-shirt. Tim feels that no one is really taking it seriously – and probably won’t until the shelves are actually empty.
Emma actually cares
Another key speaker was Ashwin Prasad, CEO of Tesco. Now I make a point of not shopping in supermarkets unless I really have to … having listened to this speech, I won’t be changing my shopping habits! He talked a lot about partnerships and working together to make the food chain more resilient, that Tesco is ‘data driven’ and ‘resilience is financial stability’ … it was a great speech. But when pressed with questions on farm support and profitability, the answers turned a bit woolly. We all know the large retailers are a hard nut to crack – the power they wield is recognised by governments, but no one really wants to level the playing field and share the risk.
Then on to our Secretary of State, Emma Reynolds. Personally, I feel that Emma, is probably the first person in that job for some time who actually wants it. Once a minister who seemed destined for backbench obscurity, she was thrust into the cabinet last September, and she has grabbed the position with both hands.
She has really listened to rural businesses and engaged in genuine communication. It was also clear at conference she has a great working relationship with the NFU officeholders. She was a large part of the reason for the changes on IHT.
But now is the time to start delivering – putting into place policy that actually makes a change on the ground, both now and for the future. Her biggest problem is the Treasury, who just don’t – and seemingly don’t want to – understand rural businesses. Take the new SFI26 agreements: there is a lot of good stuff, they have been made simpler and possibly fairer, but won’t suit everyone, there are winners and losers, as with all policies.
The simple fact is there is not enough budget to achieve Labour’s environmental commitments. It’s been frozen for 11 years, cut by a further £100 million for 2027 and it has effectively been allocated under a smoke screen, so that no one knows how much is in each pot.
Perhaps Tim Lang’s cynical view is right. Perhaps empty shelves and nature collapse is the only way to concentrate the minds of power.
