BY ALAN HARRIS AND PETER ROSNER
LONDON - "The worst crisis in agriculture since the 1930s."
That's how the November 12 Times of London and other dailies
here described the devastation faced by farmers in the United
Kingdom
A report by accountants Deloitte and Touche in October estimated a drop of 66 percent in farm profits over two years and that a quarter of farms are now running at a loss. According to the Times, figures to be released later in November are expected to show that total farm income has dropped to 700 million this year (1 = $1.65), compared to about 4 billion two years ago. Hardest hit are family farmers, with farm closures escalating daily.
In response to this crisis, UK agriculture minister Nicholas Brown announced November 16 a meager "emergency aid package" of 120 million to farmers. National Farmers Union leader Ben Gill described the package as "a short term safety net for some farmers teetering on the brink of financial collapse." The union is a conservative association whose membership ranges from the largest capitalist farmers to small family farmers.
"We are grateful for the package but we would like to see long-term solutions to our problems," said Maurice Vellacott, a working farmer of hill livestock from Exmoor in the west of England. He was speaking to Militant reporters November 18 outside the Houses of Parliament where about 150 small farmers, mainly from the southwest of England and Wales, held a public meeting and organized to lobby Members of Parliament (MP). The event was called by Farmers in Crisis, an organization of small farmers.
"Today we sell a lamb for 28 and the supermarkets charge 119," Villacote said. He pointed out that the middlemen - abattoirs, distribution networks, and supermarkets - get the difference between these two prices. Last year the price farmers received was 48 per lamb.
Villacote has run a deficit this year of 24,000. His costs include 10,000 per year in interest on his mortgage. He will receive 7000 from the government aid package, which means he will still finish the year in the red to the tune of 17,000.
Villacote's wife and son used to work with him on the farm, but since they've hit hard times they both have taken other jobs. "Now it's just me and the dog," he stated. These figures give a glimpse to the kind of aid the government package amounts to. It also covers only some farmers.
Villacote said that other farmers are even worse off than himself. Graham McCloud from North Devon, another farmer in the group Militant reporters interviewed, will get nothing from the package because his farm is in the lowlands. And pig farmers, one of the hardest-hit groups, will also receive nothing.
The package's main recipients will be hill farmers and those in the beef industry hit by fluctuations in national currencies -such as suckler cow producers. A third element of the package is extending special payments to farmers to slaughter and destroy within three weeks of birth male calves that have no markets due to the ban on exports following the outbreak of the BSE, or "mad cow," disease. This scheme, due to expire November 30, has been extended to April. But payments to farmers will now only be 70 percent of the previous rate.
Many of the farmers who participated in the November 18 protest were susceptible to reactionary, protectionist explanations as to reasons of the recent devastating conditions they face. At the same time many of them focus their demands on getting a living income.
Villacote's view was that "the strong pound and cheap imports" were the decisive reasons for the crisis faced by farmers like himself.
The predominant theme at the meeting inside Parliament between the farmers and MPs was that the supermarkets pay farmers a pittance for their produce and livestock, compared to the prices of food on the supermarket shelves. However, when Liberal Democrat member of parliament Paul Tyler claimed that "cut-price substandard imports" were the biggest problem, he received a favorable reception from the audience.
Rightist forces are also appealing to the farmers attempting to channel discontent in a nationalist direction. The UK Independence Party issued a leaflet outside the lobby blaming the European Union and farmers from other countries for the crisis. "British farmers are being ruined by events that have nothing to do with British Agriculture: our obligations under EMU - even though we may never join - mean high interest rates and an artificially strong pound. Our economy is being dragged down in order to make it converge with those of our EU `partners,'" the flyer said. "You can't even sell your produce at home because our `partners' dump their surpluses on us - and they will stop at nothing to squeeze us out of third markets."
The rightist Countryside Alliance, an organization that beats the drum for the "British way of life" in the countryside, attempting to draw small farmers behind big agro-business and large landowner interests, also backed the lobby of Parliament.
The National Farmers Union refused to throw its weight behind the lobby. "I think the union is a bit scared of us and what we are trying to do," a spokesman for Farmers in Crisis said in a statement. "We were asked not to upset talks with the government and the supermarkets, but we told the two senior members of NFU staff we met that grassroots farmers felt talks were going nowhere."