Upland Farming

Andrew Bingham Excerpts

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

I greatly appreciate the chance to talk briefly tonight about upland farming, not least because my hon. Friend the new Minister—my hearty congratulations to him—represents Penrith and The Border, a part of the world that we both know well. I know that he has the same problems I do with farmers who are struggling on upland pasture. He is very shrewd, and although he is new to the job he certainly knows his subject. I think we can both agree about one thing—it takes a very special sort of farmer to be able to ply this trade on the moorland and uplands of the United Kingdom.

Cattle and sheep on the lonely but lovely purple-capped landscapes of Exmoor are bred to be tough, and so are the people who tend that land and always have done, but mostly it is not much of a living. In the LFAs—the less-favoured areas, as Whitehall insists on calling them—some farmers, as we well know in this House, barely cover their costs. They have to rely on unpaid family labour to help run their businesses, or diversify. Their savings have dwindled hugely. Holidays, new cars, nights out and even clothes are sometimes luxuries that they can no longer afford.

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

Of course I give way to my hon. Friend, with pleasure.

[Andrew Bingham]

In my constituency there are lots of hill farmers. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the difficulties facing these farmers in the current climate and operational system are discouraging the next generation of younger farmers? Ultimately, when we look across our beautiful fields, what we see is the result of the work these farmers do, and I have great concern for the future.

[Mr Liddell-Grainger]

As always, my hon. Friend hits the nail on the head; he is absolutely right. He knows as well as I do—we are roughly the same age—about the closure of agricultural colleges across the United Kingdom and the failure to invest in farming and young farmers. Our inability to help finance young farmers to get into farming has proved to be almost insurmountable. A lot of us, including me, should really be farming. That is what we set out to do, and we have ended up in such esteemed places as this.

I am afraid that this entire situation—my hon. Friend put it very eloquently—is not a sob story but a reality. He and I know it to be the truth, because these people are our constituents. They are proud and extremely hard-working people. It is not that they do not want to be farmers—of course they do; it is what their parents and grandparents did, and they want to continue a tradition as much as anything else—but the balance sheets do not add up. They cannot grow cereals or exotic vegetables on unsheltered land at high altitude. They have to graze livestock instead—the most uncertain and least profitable part of cattle and sheep farming. Hill farmers are rightly at the end of the production chain. They are more vulnerable than most to price fluctuations, as we are seeing at the moment. If their costs go up, that comes out of their pockets. In some ways, it is a miracle, given the economics, that they have survived, but miracles do happen.

Let us look at some local things. The best sheep tags in Britain are designed by an Exmoor company—an excellent local company called Shearwell. Despite all the challenges on Exmoor, it still supports two markets at Cutcombe and at Blackmoor Gate—fantastic! However, because cheap imports such as New Zealand lamb and Polish beef are flooding in, prices get squeezed, and I am afraid that our hill farmers and other farmers take the hit. Farm incomes on uplands like Exmoor are way down. Not long ago, the average income was roughly £31,000. That may sound like a reasonable amount of money, but remember it is just turnover—most of it comes from subsidies, not profit. A similar lowland farm would reckon to be getting about double that—possibly £60,000 or more—yet it is our hard-pressed hill farmers who have helped to create some of the finest landscapes in Europe, and not just in our country.