Farming's future

THE Government's intention to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board is an early indication that the new administration is likely to be pro-farming.

It is a welcome change of emphasis that contrasts with New Labour's antipathy towards the agricultural industry – the honourable exception being Leeds MP Hilary Benn who worked tirelessly to promote the rural economy.

This follows the appointment of a number of key ministers who have an abundance of farming expertise. Ignorance will certainly not be an acceptable excuse if the coalition Government finds itself, at some point, at loggerheads with countryside leaders about aspects of policy.

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Yet it is unlikely that farmers will have few complaints at the demise of the Agricultural Wages Board. It was created in 1948 to look after the interests of unskilled farm labourers. And, even though its work has now been eclipsed by the introduction of the national minimum wage, it still costs about 200,000 a year to run – money that the public sector can ill afford to squander in this "age of austerity".

As Yorkshire's William Worsley, the president of the Country & Land Business Association, says so eloquently in today's newspaper, it is more important that farmers negotiate such matters with their staff each year and that a "tractor driver today is a highly skilled individual and I think a free market would reward him much better".

This, of course, does not mean that farmers can blithely ignore their responsibilities as employers. Quite the opposite. But it does give them the opportunity to run their business with less state interference.