Anybody who wants to know what is wrong with UK farming could start by going to New Zealand. The New Zealand dollar looks like an English pound. It buys about the same in New Zealand, as the pound does in the UK. You can buy the same full English breakfast for three dollars, as you can, in England for three pounds. A salary of 30,000 New Zealand dollars provides about the same standard of living as a salary of £30,000 in North Yorkshire - but international exchange rates give the New Zealand dollar the value of about one third of a UK pound. So, when you exchange your pounds for dollars in New Zealand, you can buy your full English breakfast for a pound and rent a hire car for £15.00 a day.

I never saw a Tesco or Sainsbury's superstore in New Zealand, but all New Zealand farmers know these companies as the main buyers of their produce. So they sell New Zealand lamb for what is a reasonable price to them, but a very cheap price for Tesco and Sainsburys. New Zealand lamb is no better nor worse than English lamb, and the UK farmer has to compete with New Zealand prices, artificially and unfairly adjusted, to his disadvantage, by international currency exchange rates. So UK farmers are not able to compete on the same level playing field as New Zealand farmers. A town like Timaru with a population of about 30,000 has a harbour three times the size of Scarborough harbour, with quays stacked high with refrigerated containers full of meat bound for the UK.

Most of the boys I was at school with in the early 1960's were farmers' sons. I remember them well: tough, good-humoured, keen on sport, with broad local accents and little interest in academic subjects. They all looked forward eagerly to their sixteenth birthday, when they could leave school and help their fathers run the familly farm. Most farmers with medium sized farms could afford to give their children a private education. Today, few farmers' sons want to stay in farming, and the suicide rate of farmers in their late middle age is one of the highest in the country. What has gone wrong?

Wartime rationing made politicians conscious of the need to make the UK self-sufficient in terms of food production. Our farms became the most efficient in Europe. They were supported by social policies, such as the compulsory purchase of milk by the Milk Marketing Board at guaranteed prices, and the provision of free milk to schools. In 1972 the UK joined the European Economic Community (the "EEC") which is better known as the Common Market, and which has since been renamed the EU. The EEC's Common Agricultural Policy ("CAP" for short) was designed to protect mainly French peasant farmers. It did this by maintaining prices at a level which would give the smaller French farmer a decent living. The more efficient UK farmers benefitted hugely from this. As a result "wine lakes", "butter mountains" etc. were created.

After 1972, the cost of raw materials, particularly fuel, rose dramatically, and inflation accellerated. Something had to be done to bring prices down - particularly food prices, which have a profound effect on the highly artifical calculation of the Retail Price Index. So the Conservative government, elected in 1979, adopted two important policies, which were not seriously opposed by any other political party.

Firstly, they succeeded in persuading the EEC to "reform" the CAP. The "wine lakes" and "butter mountains" disappeared, and food prices fell. Secondly, they promoted superstores. Central Government "Guidance Notes" were issued to all local planning authorities which made it virtually impossible to refuse planning consent for at least one superstore in every district. Authorities which defied the "guidance" were ordered to pay Planning Inquiry costs, as Ryedale was, when they refused permission for the superstores on Clifton Moor.

It will be many years before the public will know if Mrs. Thatcher and the Whitehall mandarins who advised her were able to foresee the long-term consequences of these policies. The immediate effect was to appear to bring inflation under control and stabilise the pound. Farmers, who had benfitted from the unreformed CAP, found they could take the initial reduction in their income in their stride - particularly as their losses were partly offset by EEC subsidies either to "set aside" land or even to keep it in production. It took many years for superstores to achieve their present 80% monopoly of retail food sales and their consequent stranglehold on the producers.

In 1993 the UK signed the Maastricht Treaty. Until then the European Commission had no power to promulgate EU legislation unless all member states agreed. Maastricht opened the floodgates. Henceforth EU directives would have the force of law if approved by a "qualified majority" of the unelected Council of Ministers, whose meetings are not open to the press or the public. Since then there has been a constant stream of EU legislation. Perhaps most of it is good, but much is unnecessary and expensive and has caused farmers to pay ever increasing sums for what is fondly called "the cost of regulation".

In many cases, our Whitehall mandarins have made matters worse, by giving EU directives an extravagant gold plating of their own invention. So, for example, a directive was issued requiring the inspection of all animals for slaughter by "veterinarians". Continental "veterinarians" are not the highly qualified animal surgeons who we know in the UK as "vets", but, by analogy with human medicine, their qualification is similar to that of a pharmacist. Nevertheless Whitehall decided to interpret the EU directive as requiring all animals for slaughter to be inspected by our highly qualified and expensive UK vets. The consequent increase in costs forced the closure of many hundreds of small local abbatoirs - a factor which is at least partly responsible for the spread of the current Foot and Mouth epidemic.

The solution is obvious. The EU Commission is now only required to consult the directly elected EU Parliament: it should be made fully accountable to it. The EU Parliament should be able to amend and block the Commission's proposals and introduce and debate its own - like all real parliaments do. This would slow down the pace of change, and give people time to think new proposals through. Sadly, the only UK political party which advocates true democracy within the EU are the Liberal Democrats: William Hague's Conservatives may oppose any extension of the EU's powers, but they propose no change to the present undemocratic status quo.

Then in 1999, Euroland adopted the Euro - with dramatic consequences for the UK. Superstores have found that, because the pound is high against the Euro, it is cheaper to buy food in bulk from Euroland than home grown produce. It is as though the UK is surrounded by something like a giant New Zealand. So, in effect, we buy food with our high pounds at low Euroland prices, just as we buy New Zealand lamb with our pounds at low New Zealand prices. Our own agriculture and industry are unable to compete on a level playing field with their continental rivals because of the unfair and artificial effects of international exchange rates between the pound and the Euro.

Meanwhile, as farm incomes sank, the cost of farm equipment and machinery rocketed well above the rate of inflation.

And so the tragedy unfolds. Our most efficient farming system in Europe is being ruined by the combined effects of the "reform" of the CAP, the excessive cost of regulation, our failure to join the Euro at an acceptable exchange rate, and the monopolistic exploitation of the superstores. When farmers ask politicians for a fair reward for their labour, they are merely told to "diversify" - to provide bed and breakfast, caravan sites, or to sell their own produce - as if they were not working hard enough already.

And now we have the Foot and Mouth epidemic. Farm incomes have now become so depressed that more money seems to be made from tourism than from farming. So, the officials and the politicians they advise seem to have come to the superficial conclusion that the tourist industry is more valuable than the agriculture which produces the food we eat. So, while farmers are reviled for "inappropriate movements of personnel" or animals, tourists are encouraged to to visit "uninfected" countryside, whether they come from infected areas or not. Meanwhile, vast areas (like the tens of square miles North of Hawes) are bereft of all farm animals. The officials may think they have made the land desease free: in fact they have created the kind of desolation which is unlikely to appeal to tourists. When vaccination of only a limited kind presents a possible compromise between the needs of tourism and the protection of agriculture, the stubborn resistance of the NFU is perhaps surprising.

MAFF has been blamed for its incompetence in not preventing and not controlling the desease, but that does not stop its senior officials from coming up with ideas for the future. Our farmers have become an underclass - a hard working minority who work long hours for less than the minimum wage - often in Summer between 6.00am and dusk - and later. Most cannot afford to pay the minimum wage to agricultural workers, and so the wife has to share the work instead. Rather than find a way of giving farmers a fair reward for their labour, MAFF sees a "restructuring" of the farming "industry" as the answer. Sadly, the officials do not understand that agriculture cannot be reorganised like local government. For most farmers, farming is not an "agri-business" or "farming industry": it is a way of life which has evolved over the centuries, and the UK will be very much the poorer without it. Without farming as we know it, the character of the countryside will change for ever, and conservation and tourism will be the greatest losers.

NB This article was too long for the Gazette and had to be split into the two other articles with this title

NB: See "Introduction" for my up to date views on farming policy