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In the upcoming UK general election, support our farmers by voting for the party that will stop politicians and corporations from meddling in food production and let farmers do what they do best, farm. 

The destruction of or preservation and growth of the farming sector should be one of the major deciding factors in who to vote for in these elections as it affects the nation’s health, well-being and food security.

In the following, Venetia Carpenter delves into each of the main parties’ manifestos to find out what they say about food production and farming.

Three Main Parties Would Destroy Farming… But Reform Ticks Every Box

By Venetia Carpenter as published by News Uncut

I have written a few articles now about the predicament of our farmers and our food security.  From all the actions being taken by the current Government, it feels like our farmers and our food are under severe attack. To help you understand what is going on, let me first try to give a summary of the current position around farmers and food, although it will be impossible to cover everything in this article.

Firstly, the UK Government has agreed trade deals with New Zealand, Australia, India, Texas, the US and Italy among others that result in the import of tariff-free cheap food, food that may also be of lower quality due to the different rules regarding the use of chemicals, animal welfare and so on, in different countries. If the UK is supposed to be working towards Net Zero, how does transporting food thousands of miles from the other side of the world fit in with that ethos?

This cheaper, perhaps sub-quality food is being sold in our supermarkets to customers at the expense of better-quality UK-produced food. People want to be sure that they are getting good quality food for their health. Can that be guaranteed with these trade deals?

Even if the public try to buy British food, there has been mislabelling in the supermarkets, making it hard to identify which food is British. Food is brought into the UK from abroad before it is packaged and labelled here for sale. Because it is packed in the UK, it is legal for that food to be labelled as coming from the UK, even though it may not be at UK-required standards.

The supermarkets squeeze the prices farmers get for their food. It generally, for example, costs a dairy farmer about 40p to 43p to produce a litre of milk but the farmer makes a loss – only getting 37.42p per litre. The supermarkets sell milk at about £1.68 per litre. Where does the rest of the money go? All I know is that supermarkets are making huge profits at what seems to be the expense of both the farmer and the consumer.

Supermarkets have a monopoly over food prices with at least 83 per cent of all grocery shopping in the UK done in supermarkets in December 2023. Why does the Government-supported organisation (it is found on the Government website), the Competition and Markets Authority (the CMA), do nothing to stop the supermarkets from treating the farmers and the consumers unfairly? According to its website, the CMA is supposed to “help people, businesses and the UK economy by promoting competitive markets and tackling unfair behaviour.”

In addition to competition from cheap imports, the Government seems keen to reduce the production of British food. Apparently, farmers are responsible for much of our climate change (something that can be disputed). Farmers in Wales have been told, under the “Sustainable Farming Scheme,” that they will have to rewild, with trees, 10 per cent of their farms and grow wildflowers on a further 10 per of their land. This leaves them with 80 per cent of their land on which to produce food.  

Rewilding and flower “production” is also being encouraged in England through payments by the Government. In my local area of Kent alone, 1,000 acres have been put down to wildflowers just this year. This is hardly surprising as the Government has been reducing subsidies to support the growth of food in the UK. Costs of food production have increased (increased cost of feed for animals, fertiliser for crops, energy prices and cost of labour), while the payments farmers get for their food products have stagnated or reduced.

Corporate Ownership of Farmland is Increasing Fast

Farmers who grow wildflowers are paid £600 per hectare per annum by the Government, using your tax. This is a three-year contract. Why is the Government paying money to stop food production rather than to support an increase in food production?

Farmers in England have also been offered £100,000 each to give up farming and sell their farms. 2,200 farmers have taken up this offer. Corporate ownership of farmland is increasing fast – in 2022, private and institutional investors bought 33 per cent of all farms sold. What will they do with this land? They are not farmers.

The first aim of the Government, after the Brexit vote, should have been to make the UK as self-sufficient as possible for food. In 1972, the UK was producing 86 per cent of its own food. Through Government policies to stop food being grown here and increasing immigration, it has been reducing since then. If, for any reason, imports could not reach the UK, what would happen then? I have read that supermarkets only have two days’ worth of food supply in store at any time. How quickly could we run out?

So, we have a General Election coming up and I decided to look at the manifestos of the main parties to see what they say about their commitment to farming and food.  The Conservative manifesto can be found HERE.

The Conservatives claim that in the last Parliament they “maintained the farming budget to support our food security.” And yet, everything I have mentioned above has been happening under a Conservative Government. Some farmers are telling me that we could see food shortages as early as this winter.

The Conservatives want to increase the UK-wide farming budget by £1billion over the Parliament. My concern is what this money will be used for. They claim that, in England, nearly half of all farmers have now signed up for schemes, referring to food security and sustainable agriculture. All I have seen is farmers taking deals not to grow food but maybe I have not heard of any of the schemes to help produce food. 

The Conservatives claim they always stand up for farmers when negotiating new trade deals. That, in most farmers’ opinion, is blatantly untrue, with cheap tariff-free competition from other countries. I have dairy farming cousins in Kent. They have a daughter married to a New Zealand farmer who was shocked at how bad the deal was for UK farmers.

The Conservatives plan to “introduce a legally binding target to enhance our food security.” However, in just four years under the Conservative Government, the UK’s self-sufficiency in food has dropped from two-thirds to one-third. This means that everyone is relying on foreign shipments for all but one meal a day. Will the Conservatives now do something to turn this around?

The Conservatives claim they are going to “reform our planning system to deliver fast track permissions for the building of infrastructure on farms.” Currently, farmers use “permitted development” where possible, to put up agricultural needed structures. Is this going to be better than what we have now? I really don’t know.

The Conservatives want to “use our significant investment in R&D to prioritise cutting edge technology in areas such as fertiliser and vertical farming.” Do you really want your food to be produced by “vertical farming”?

Vertical farming is the system of cultivating crops in vertically stacked layers, instead of a single surface, like a greenhouse or field. Generally, cultivators incorporate these into vertical structures, such as shipping barrels, skyscrapers, used warehouses and abandoned mine shafts. According to the Conservatives, this will heal the gap between the supply and demand of food.

However, the online publication Sifted claimed that vertical farming “can be a nice PR exercise but it doesn’t make money.” According to a note by the European Commission, indoor vertical farms spend about 60 per cent of their revenue on electricity costs. As at September 2023, only 27 [per cent of these businesses were profitable and Sifted wrote that the “vertical farming boom is over (for now).” Sifted found at least 15 vertical farming companies in Europe that have gone bankrupt. If this is true, why are the Conservatives wanting to put any of our tax into this?

It may be that some of what they propose in their manifesto will be good. However, looking at the Conservative track record in recent years for the farming industry I find it hard to trust them now and will not be voting for them.

Labour Has Not Even Mentioned Farming in its Manifesto

Let’s look at the Labour manifesto. Somebody told me that they had not mentioned farming and food security in their manifesto at all. They could be right. I have looked at it and, unless I have missed it, I can find nothing. As food security is one of the most important things for our country and Labour has not even written about it. For me, Labour is definitely not the party to support.

The next manifesto to consider is that of the Liberal Democrats. The first comment I will make is that under their “fair deal on the environment,” they talk about a drive for “a rooftop solar revolution.” Does this mean we can remove or reduce the number of solar panels taking over good agricultural land across the country? That would be good news.

The Liberal Democrats have a section on “Food and Farming” in their manifesto. They list five bullet points for action. They want to “stand up for British farmers and ensure everyone can get affordable, healthy and nutritious food, produced to high welfare and environmental standards.”

The Liberal Democrats have a real focus on the environment and carbon storage and plan to fit food production around that. For example, their last bullet point is to “support farmers properly in restoring woodland, peatland and waterways, creating new natural flood protections and managing land to encourage species recovery and carbon storage, while producing food for the table.” This, of course, is possible if handled correctly and would make everyone happy – food production without the destruction of nature. Farmers themselves will support this ethos. Why would they want to destroy what is around them?  It is only government policies that have pushed them in the wrong direction in the past; e.g. being paid to remove hedges. Now farmers are blamed for this and being paid to put hedges back.

But if we go into the detail of how the Liberal Democrats propose to do the above, there are a few disturbing points. Firstly, under the desire to “ensure our farming and food system is on an environmentally sustainable footing,” they propose introducing a Research and Innovation Fund to support new and emerging technologies in the sector “including the development of alternative proteins in which the UK can become a world leader.”

What do they mean by “alternative proteins”? I do know that factories are being set up in the UK to produce food made from insects and that Sainsbury’s is going into lab-manufactured meat. I really hope that the Liberal Democrats are not looking to push these initiatives. This would mean less “real” food for consumers in the long run and fewer farmers.

The Liberal Democrats claim that they want to “give consumers confidence in the food they eat.” They have already lost my confidence if I am right in what I say above.  Anyway, one way of gaining consumer confidence, according to the Liberal Democrats, is “providing local authorities with greater powers and resources to inspect and monitor food production.” Does this mean that they will have the right to come out to farms and tell farmers how to farm? Farmers are so fed up with the involvement of Governments in their work.

The problem is that Government employees are mostly people who have never farmed in their lives and seem to give no recognition that farmers really do know how to do their job. Most farmers are keen to “do the right thing” by their land and their food production. They see themselves as custodians of the land and want to pass it on to their children in good shape so that it can continue to produce good food. Surely it is time for politicians to step back from meddling in food production and let farmers serve the country with good food in the way they know best.

Liberals Care Nothing For Food Security

The Liberal Democrats also write about “ensuring all imported food meets UK standards for health and welfare and that goods are properly checked.” This is good in that there will be more confidence in imported food but the Liberal Democrats do not seem too concerned about food security – producing as much of our own food as possible – or about the impact on farmers livelihoods with more and more food being imported from abroad.

Overall, it appears to me that the Liberal Democrats have a greater focus on the environment and sustainability than on farming. If they do not also strongly support the farmers in their food production, will they not continue the demise of the farmer and real homegrown food?

The Liberal Democrats seem to be stepping into the space traditionally filled by the Green Party. Some say they are making the Green Party irrelevant. So, let’s look at the Green Party’s manifesto.

The Green Party acknowledge that “our food system is failing us all. Poor diets are estimated to cost our NHS £6.5bn a year and yet successive governments have failed to take on the unhealthy food lobby.” I totally agree with that. However, they then go on to claim that “our food system accounts for a third of all greenhouse gas emissions and is the greatest driver of nature loss and pollution in our rivers.” That is a pretty damning statement for farmers. Is this why they are being demonised by the current Government in the name of “Net zero”? Let’s forget that, for example, Thames Water have been pumping pure slurry into our waterways and that it is Government policies that have encouraged farmers to pull out hedges, use man-made fertilisers and not natural fertilisers and so on.

The Greens have six main aims. One is “farm payments to be linked to reduced use of pesticides and agro-chemicals.” Helping farmers achieve this with payments would be a sensible way of using funding to support farmers. However, there is a powerful lobby that pushes for the use of chemicals in everything in our lives as they make money from their use. Monsanto is just one of these big international companies.  There could be a huge battle here with the farmer caught in the middle.

Another aim of the Green Party is “policies that ensure that good quality surplus food is not wasted.” Supermarkets do this every day. They say that they cannot pay farmers a fair price for their food and yet, after giving a little to food banks and charities, can afford to throw the rest of their surplus food away every day. This is food that is still safe to eat and could all be given to those struggling to feed themselves now. It seems that the supermarkets do not want to do this. They, almost without exception, have CCTV cameras trained on the food that they throw out to discourage people in need from helping themselves to some of it. If the Green Party could ensure that all supermarket food was used properly, that would be a big plus.

To conclude, although there may be one or two minor advantages to the farmer, the Green Party is, as to be expected, purely focused on green issues, some of which could be very detrimental to our farmers and our food supply.

Reform Seems to Tick Every Box Regarding Farming

How about the newcomer Reform UK?  Here is the link to their “contract” on agriculture. Look at page 18 (page 19 on the slides).

I have to say that Reform UK ticks every box. They want to focus on the smaller farms. It is the smaller farms that are going out of business. They want to keep farmland in use and not use it for solar farms or rewilding. They want to “help farmers to farm, not pay them to leave or retire.” They want to grant powers to the CMA to ensure fair pricing. They want to target 70 per cent to ensure food security. They want clear labelling of food to ensure consumer choice. Finally, they want to cut form filling for farmers – currently, farmers spend more than 15 hours a week on paperwork. If Reform UK got elected and followed this through, it would definitely help to secure our farmers and our food security.

To conclude, regarding the party manifestos around farming and food security, the one that works for me is Reform UK. They call their manifesto a contract and say that they will do all this within the first 100 days in office. We all know that parties never stand by their manifestos. Will Reform UK do so? It would be good to be able to believe them.

As well as a number of parties standing for election, there are also, for this election, many independent candidates also standing. If enough got in, this could be a real challenge to the current party system. The Independent Platform has written that “57 per cent of the UK is willing to vote Independent.” This could be a huge opportunity for Independents.

“We Must Return to an Individualistic Society…”

William Keyte, a constitutional expert, states that the current party political system is “directing a huge amount of policy with a wide body of legislation to go with it and we are invited to take part in selecting which package we would like.” This will effectively ride roughshod over the free will of a large minority of the population.  Keyte considers this to be unconstitutional and believes that we “should get back to an individualistic society, one that is more authentic with the constitution.” 

This, William says, can be done through education and “the Independents are the ones who are the best positioned to do that.” They have not got the party system behind them to distract them, where they have to go in an agreed policy direction.  The Independents are a way of getting into the political system and raising awareness of constitutional law.

Because of all the above, it is well worth looking at your Independent candidates and asking them what they will do to support farmers and food security. I know that some of them are taking a keen interest in the farming situation.  

Independent candidate, David Heather, who is standing in Braintree, Essex, states that he “will support our local rural communities, particularly farmers.” On Net Zero, he writes that he “will support a more gradual approach that takes into consideration the cost and benefit of measures put forward.” This approach could hugely benefit farmers in his area as, currently, it seems that farmers are being penalised because of Net Zero. Frankly, if you want food security, you need to ensure that this is given as much of a focus, if not more, than Net Zero.

Nigel Jacklin is standing as an independent candidate in Bexhill and Battle. He told me that his view is that “farmers need to be allowed to get on with growing food.  They face the combined challenges of the weather and the markets (variable input prices and payments for their produce). These are exacerbated by red tape and interference from DeFRA etc. They need certainty. They don’t need to be demonised and the answer isn’t that they should all set up farm shops.”

Jacklin went on to say that “the idea that farm shops are the answer is ridiculous. If you grow wheat, what are you going to sell? Why would people drive out of town once a year to buy a load of wheat? And why do they think farmers know how to run shops?” A farming friend of Jacklin’s has expanded into making yoghurt and running a rental property. This farmer has complained to Jacklin that they used to have just one set of problems (running a dairy), but now they have three.

If you don’t like any of the voting options available at this upcoming election, you should still go to “vote.” You can write across your ballot paper “I DO NOT CONSENT.” This is in line with a legal case called Ashby vs White that was decided in 1703 and still applies today. The case covered three key issues: 

1. the separation of powers;
2. the use of the Monarchy’s prerogative for the benefit of the people; and
3. election and ballot rights. Putting “I DO NOT CONSENT” aligns precisely with the full judgement of Ashby vs White.

The House of Lords at the time, in a 10-2 majority, ruled in our favour, and the Monarch prorogued Parliament in our favour. The phrase “Governed by consent” was thus established in law, not merely as a convention. Judges have stated that every vote must be counted, as seen in Hansard.

Also watch: How To Throw The General Election Into Disarray, New Uncut, 25 May 2024

What many don’t know is that we have a King’s Bench Election Court after each election. This special court is dedicated solely to election issues and has specific opening and closing times. Why is this court important? The judges in these courts are highly trained in common law and elections and they are well-versed in Ashby vs White. Ignoring this case would mean perjuring their oath of office.

The phrase “I DO NOT CONSENT” effectively withdraws consent, as per Ashby vs White, whereas not voting is simply abstention – a tacit agreement to whoever wins.  

If “I DO NOT CONSENT” forms the majority, it withdraws consent to be taxed and to be governed by Parliament, causing a constitutional crisis. I do not believe, for one minute, that this could happen but, at least, you will be making your point if you are not happy with any of the other options.

To conclude, I am just asking you, when you decide on your vote, that you vote in a way that will help support our farmers and our food security.

PLEASE SUPPORT OUR FARMERS TO KEEP THEM IN BUSINESS.

Featured image taken from ‘Farmers ride tractors into central London in major protest over trade deals’, Independent, 26 March 2024