Time to value farmers more in 2022 – Yorkshire Post Letters

IN response to Victoria Finan’s article ‘‘Tourism could be growing part of farm income’’ (The Yorkshire Post, December 17), she quotes agricultural expert Rupert Wailes-Fairbairn who tells us that installing glamping opportunities, shepherd huts and yurts, could see the region’s farmers experience a strong income boost.

What all our ‘experts’ so often omit to mention is that there are usually significant costs involved (in planning costs, infrastructure and countless surveys/inspections).

Any farming business requires the correct skill set (and bags of patience and determination) to deal with jumping through all the costly hoops, as well as dealing with the demanding expectations of the public once a scheme is approved and installed.

The time commitment can often detract from getting on with the business of food production and ultimately both parts of the business suffer. You could argue that a diversification might generate additional jobs in rural areas or allow more of the family to earn an income from the business, but it’s important to choose the right activity where there is a genuine interest and passion to make it work.

Some farming businesses are not in a position to diversify (into anything) due to existing tenancy restrictions or a landlord who might want a significant share of the income generated. So many of the region’s farming businesses have diversified over the last 30 years and have created some very successful additional income streams, but we must all remember that for many farming families, what they are best at doing is producing food.

We all have to be prepared to pay more for good quality, nutritious, home produced food and the retailers and processors have to allow the primary producers (the farmers and growers) to retain a fair reward for their efforts. Farming families work hard and they take a great deal of risk. For the past 30 or 40 years, many rural professionals and the suppliers of farm inputs (as well as the retailers) have done well out of farming, very often to the detriment of farm incomes.

What good, efficient and forward thinking UK farming really needs now is the backing – and trust – of our leadership as we move through the Agricultural Transition Plan to ensure that we have a robust mechanism for a home grown food supply coupled with a farming community who are proud of their farms, what they produce and are very happy to enhance and maintain the environmental benefits that we all want to see.

Our farmers have been manipulated for far too long and it is time for us to open our eyes and value them in the same way we should value all those who work so hard for everyone, everyday, come rain or shine, but are so often overlooked and taken for granted.

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