March 2023 – The Lakeland Auctioneer

As a child I was always told to tell the truth, admit my mistakes and apologise before the untruth was found out. I can’t in all honesty say that I carried that mantra through to adulthood completely, but then who does? Most auctioneers of course! But certainly not those people in the higher echelons of national politics going by recent events.

My mother used to say, “Lies will come back to bite you”, and generally speaking, as a child they usually did. We’ve all been in that position, and it is remarkable how often large teeth marks are left in people’s derriere.

Last year I saw a spoof photo of a well- known politician with an extremely unruly mop of blond hair. The photo showed him talking on his mobile phone expostulating that he personally was going to take full responsibility to make something happen immediately. Behind him there was an advisor saying, “Excuse me Sir, just to let you know, there is no phone signal here”.

This reminded me of an incident in a Cumbrian auction mart many years ago when a prime sheep buyer was proudly showcasing one of those new- fangled mobile phones. As he walked around the auction office with phone to ear, he could be heard saying in a very loud voice,

“Yes I need light lambs. I’m as fit as fire today. I’ve got people on for me all over the country”. The conversation appeared to bounce back and forth with other sheep buyers in rapt attention. And then the most amazing thing happened. Mid- sentence as he was listing how many sheep had been bought for him in each market across the UK, his phone rang!!! with that well known shrill and annoying jingle from the 1990’s that got on everyone’s nerves.

He could have played it cool and pretended that the signal had been lost and that the other person had rung him back. But these were the early days of mobile phones, and this thing looked like a brick. The sheep buyer had only just got it and couldn’t work out how to stop the “diddle- lala, diddle- lala” ringtone. Frantically he pressed all of the buttons passing it from hand to hand like a hot potato. The other buyers laughed loudly and in the end in desperation the phone was dropped on the floor.

You can imagine the banter in the ring for the rest of the sale. If nothing else, it proves the point that “lies come back to bite you”. Many of us within the farming community hope very much that this is further proven in future as we remember the words of a Conservative minister regarding the farming industry,

“If you have high standards here, and then you allow food in from elsewhere, you are not really contributing to higher animal welfare and environmental standards, you are simply off- shoring those lower standards – and that is wrong”, said Michael Gove on Countryfile. Should that dreadful scenario become a reality, then my advice to him and his mates would be “best wear some thick pants”. By the current direction of travel, it would appear they need to wear Kevlar.

A wise fellow told me recently “Community is more powerful than beaurocracy”. After watching events unfold today in the Netherlands, i am drawn to conclude that the man was right!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64967513?fbclid=IwAR1Iu6kJ4J4OvNeexNLD6GrrpTA17OjUeGozO5djIQ0c1nzMnkltXY8RZhM

What is happening to some Dutch farmers in the name of the environment is truly shocking. The government is “offering” to buy- out thousands of farms in order to slash the use of nitrogen fertiliser and cease agricultural emmissions in the country. The livelihoods of farmers and the future of food production appears to be justifiable collateral damage as they are hung out to dry by the politicians.

If farmers don’t accept, they are being threatened with what the attached press report says is an “Expropriation Scheme”. The sensible conservation organisations are even saying “Hang on a minute! This is not entirely the farmers fault”.

There are parallels with UK farmers over the last century in that they have all been systematically supported and encouraged to produce food at all costs for several generations. The Women’s Land Army during World Wars, rationing coupons, and intervention buying are all but forgotten.

No one remembers that farmers were asked by successive governments to keep more livestock, rip out hedges, drain wetlands and farm every inch of the land that could be ploughed in order to feed a starving hungry people. Today farmers are being held accountable for those policies and blamed as the root of the evil. UK food security isn’t really on the political table.

Now the Dutch people are standing up for their farmers and rural communities. They don’t want this! They have voted in solidarity for the new Farmer- Citizen Party which last night won the country’s provisional elections. Who does want this sort of rural land- use policy? Well actually a small but very powerful group of people in the UK might. Some with vested interests, would love to see this re- enacted across Rural England. There’s money in it, in fact large amounts. Whilst there are many who see a genuine need to change the way we manage the land, and in many ways they are not wrong, there are others sniffing an opportunity.

Even now across the UK there are landed estates, some private, some corporate, getting rid of tenants as soon as they can, either to sell land to enable large- scale greenwashing investment, or to plant their own land for their own gain. All of this is generously funded by Government through new planting and environmental schemes. There’s more profit in this than can ever be made out of letting land to tenants, and there’s a perfect facade to hide behind – “we’re saving the planet”! But what of the farmers and local communities?

The average length of tenancy across the UK is now a pitiful three years. Three years does not give a tenant farmer time to settle, raise a family in the local community, invest in the land and business and build a life. It’s a far cry from the old days of the protected multi- generational tenancies that allowed sons and daughter to take over from their parents and their parents before them. Now the loss of every tenant replaced by trees, drives another nail into the heart of a community. It also prevents talented young people from committing to the industry in a tried and tested way, by taking on a tenancy.

These are disturbing times for rural folk in the UK, and especially those connected with farming and food production. Farmers are not blameless and there is an absolute duty on them to leave the natural environment in a far better shape than they found it. It is not unreasonable to think that the scenes in the Netherlands may one day be played out in the UK as thousands of acres of productive food- producing land is re- appropriated and re- purposed in the name of the nature and climate change.

The equitable solution is for government to work up a set of rural land- use policies that balance farming with nature, where both thrive, and develop in harmony. Farming has to change for sure, but with it should come opportunity, stability and trust. Right now we’ve a long way to go. Meanwhile we watch developments across the water with interest. More than 20 million people from all over the world visit Cumbria each year loving the landscapes, the Cumbrian people, the sheep on the hills and cattle grazing in the valleys. I wonder how many would join a UK Farmer- Citizen movement if they realised that the county they love to visit may be under similiar threat. Time may tell……