A cross-compliance to bear

The reality that farming has becomes an industry as tightly regulated as pharmaceuticals, or arms exports, is brought home by the fact that the Government department that runs farming, DEFRA, referred to universally as "the ministry" (or more quietly as the Department for the Eradication of Farming and Rural Activity) has almost vice regal powers when it comes to the organisation of your farming business. If you take some sort of subsidy, and let's face it every farmer does, then the pay-off in return for the payment, is the requirement to follow a thicket of regulations that runs to several large file PDFs on the ministry's website. Build your muck pile slightly the wrong shape, or plough too close to a field edge and the full bureaucratic might of the State is called down upon you. 

It is the nature of bureaucracies that they only really punish the essentially law abiding, but getting to the point where officialdom is content to leave you alone requires levels of effort and concentration that can be distracting. For example, learning the precise way the government wants you to cut a hedge can seem like a waste of effort when your slurry tanker has sprung a leak. The answer is to go and listen to management consultants explain to bemused farmers what exactly is expected of them.

So it was with the heaviest of hearts that I had to go to a so-called "cross-compliance" presentation in Ogwell (another place in Devon that I had never heard of). I put on my best tweeds, fired up the Isuzu and prepared myself mentally to be bored rigid for three hours, with the only comfort being that Defra had thoughtfully organised the conference in the local pub. 

In the event, it was more interesting than I had expected. I turned up late trailing papers and cradling a glass of freshly bought cider only to realise that A) I was radically over-dressed in pristine check shirt, newsboy flat cap and Barbour shooting waistcoat to be anything other than a former townie B) I was the only one visibly drinking. The old Devonian in front of me turned around, looked me up and down and said: "s'pose takes all sorts" with a practiced air of resignation. 

The major issue in farming is how farmers can be weaned off the European subsidies that many have come to regard as their natural right. The next big reorganisation is in the offing, hence the frenetic round of meetings. The problem is soon that as you subsidise anything the distortions in the market start to creep in. 

For example, subsidy used to be paid per head of cattle to the point where carcasses were being held in cold storage for up to five years because of massive over-production; milk lakes and butter mountains were all a side-effect of the CAP system in the '80s and '90s. The system has since been reformed to emphasise land stewardship, but the side-effect has been that it is now more profitable to build luxury ponds for newts and five star flower accommodation for butterflies than actually do any farming. The resulting falls in headdage of sheep and cattle has contributed to the near doubling of meat prices in the past five years, which is why a lot of restaurants now serve Bavette, or flank of beef, as it is a cheap enough to preserve their margins but has the approximate taste of a prime cut. 

Anyway, the conclusion of three hours of talking was that we are all going to lose up to 11 per cent of our EU grants by 2015. This caused surprisingly little reaction from the audience, which I quizzed my next door farmer neighbour about - he had also come to the conference. He said "You have to remember that farmers are fundamentally positive people." I laughed so hard that people in the front rows turned around. "What about that farmer from Trusham who is so negative that people will only socialise with him over silent games of whist?." 

"There are always exceptions," came the reply.