BBC
I’m no fan of the BBC as regular readers will know, but todays breakfast output descended to new depths.
They did a follow up piece on some farmer who they had covered five years previously during the “foot and mouth” outbreak. At the time he was full of doom and gloom prophesies about the future. Five years on, he had bought more land and more sheep.
The BBC did the obligatory “poor farmers” bit showing this bloke “doing a part time job to help make ends meet” What they failed to mention, that anyone who can buy acres of countryside is by no means poor, and the impression they created, of some guy looking to make a few pounds was simply false.
They also failed to mention that during foot and mouth, farmers were paid compensation by the government (i.e. you and me) for their diseased lambs, at about twice the rate they would have received for live animals !
So the farmer having being helped out of difficulty by a hapless taxpayer was happily showing the dolt reporter some new born lambs, and the whole report amounted to nothing more than “Oh, poor farmers, oooh lovely newborn lambs”
It totally failed to tackle any serious issues relating to the state funding of farming in the UK. Now for some kind of kiddie vet show, fine, but for a formerly serious news organisation – do me a favour! And the worst of this? We are compelled to pay for this propaganda, as well as for the farmers livelihood.
State funding should be withdrawn from both.
posted by Stussy88 @ 10:42 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I'm not sure about your figures, for payment. A lot of farmers committed suicide due to the FMD- why would you do that if you were making more money than you would have normally?
I worked in the Rural Payments Agency and heard about the stress of FMD. People worked all hours to process claims. Notes were put on farm files, to indicate a farmer under severe stress,so that staff coul bear this in mind when communicating with them.
Even years later, it has had repercussions. Historical entitlement, payments received based on an expected number of animals- farmers would ask for their entitlements to be adjusted, showing that their stock levels fell or were wiped out. That in subsequent years, money was ploughed into the farm, rebuilding the stock levels.
It's a very complicated business, farming. Slaughter payments, suckler cows, milk quotas (which are traded), dairy farming, arable/grain etc, even money based on whether a field is permanent pasture, or paddock.
I don't deny the news segment showed a biased view, with the 'pretty lambs' etc. But without having farmed or worked in the sector dealing with farm paments, you won't know just how complicated it is.
In the last year, the claiming scheme changed, so that instead of a form for each area of farming (say suckler cow, dairy, beef etc), there was the Single Payment Scheme- one scheme to rule them all. There was one form to fill in, and this would establish your claim rights for the NEXT 10 YEARS. A HUGE deal.
Having worked in several departments (slaughter, beef, IACS, Single Payment Scheme and Inspections), trust me that it's not as simple as you might think. It's not a case of simple maths, arguing that a cow at market earns £10 and FMD paid out £15, for example.
Of course, I wouldn'y for a moment deny that government compensation schemes are complex, byzantine almost.
But I really think there's more than a degree of fishermans tales in a lot of this.
I work in land, and as a minimum you can achieve £10K an acre, selling your land to a speculator, do the maths on a fifty acre farm (which is small compared to some of them)
I'm not saying there aren't poor farmers, cos of course there are, but the debate needs to be better than the beeb offered.
Great and thoughtful reply, thanks.
Post a Comment
<< Home