Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I think that the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) was operating in the spirit of a poet, and we are obliged to him for that.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

13. What plans she has to encourage communities to contribute towards flood defences; and if she will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)]

We are on course to generate up to £140 million of additional partnership funding during the current Parliament. Our success in that regard means that we can protect even more homes—an extra 300,000—by 2021, and deliver £30 billion of benefits to our economy.

[Mr Bellingham]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her announcement 10 days ago, which was welcomed in my constituency. I am particularly grateful for her announcement of grant in aid for the long-term funding of sea defences along the Wash. Will she assure me of the Department’s full support for the community interest company project which is being led by my constituent Michael McDonnell?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I was delighted to hold a flood defence forum with my hon. Friend earlier in the year, when we also discussed the undertaking of a dredging pilot by internal drainage boards for the Ouse Washes. I am very keen for DEFRA to work with him and his constituent to ensure that we leverage the maximum possible funds for the important scheme to which he has referred.

Sale of Puppies and Kittens

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to catch your eye in this important and well-attended cross-party debate. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) for having secured it, and I agree with many of the points he made. I also pay tribute to my constituent, Carol Fowler, who has been campaigning on this issue for many years. Her campaign led to the television documentary “Pedigree Dogs Exposed”, which raised such disturbing issues on dog breeding that the BBC temporarily suspended its coverage of Crufts the following year.

First, let me start with puppy farms. We need the Government to introduce strategies for improving conditions on those farms. I pay tribute to the Dog Advisory Council and to Professor Sheila Crispin, who runs it. The council has made recommendations on regulation and legislation to address the issues and to reduce red tape in relation to the farms. There are poor conditions on puppy farms, and they need to be addressed by the provisions of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, which places a duty of care on the person responsible for pet animals. That duty of care must be enforced.

The issues relating to puppy farms have already been rehearsed in this debate, but they are so shocking that they need repeating. There is often a failure to provide veterinary care, including vaccinations and simple health checks. Puppies suffer from lack of exercise, stimulation and socialisation. Breeding establishments are generally unsuitable and not fit for purpose. If puppies do not have suitable exercise, they are much more likely to suffer from problem behaviour.

Puppies are often prematurely taken away from their mothers, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) said, the mother is often then expected to produce another litter and is left exhausted from repeated breeding.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

I also have a number of constituents who have been campaigning very hard on this issue. Hopefully, they can find common cause with my hon. Friend’s constituents. Does he agree that the role of pet shops is crucial, as they should be putting more pressure on the relevant agencies and other bodies?

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I agree, but as the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), said, legislation on pet shops is already in place. The thrust of this debate is on new legislation, but I say to the Minister that we should better enforce existing legislation, because then we might all get on a lot better.

Poor puppy farms are responsible for many health problems, including infectious diseases such as parvovirus, internal and external parasites and a range of breed-related and inherited diseases such as heart disease, epilepsy and glaucoma. It is crucial that puppy farms are not only properly licensed, but properly scrutinised—the powers are there to scrutinise them—so that we can root out the ones that operate with inappropriate conditions. As I have said, we need to enforce existing legislation better.

Secondly, the breeding of dogs for specific desirable traits can lead to serious genetic health problems as a result of inbreeding and closed gene pools. The body shape of some dog breeds can also cause immense suffering. Under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, it is illegal to beat a dog with a stick, but there is nothing to stop a breeder mating dogs to produce offspring that will then suffer from health problems.

Thirdly, I recommend that all breeders adopt puppy contracts, which are produced by the RSPCA, the British Veterinary Association and the Animal Welfare Foundation. Too often, buyers are not aware of the possible genetic problems related to poor welfare and breeding conditions.

Fourthly, the Animal Health and Welfare Board for England, which was set up by this Government, could be in a perfect position to assist with the welfare of dogs. However, its performance to date has not met the desired level. The board should take a more active interest in the welfare of dogs, which it does not do at the moment. I urge the Government to give it a role in devising light-touch regulation, ideally based on the Dog Advisory Council’s recommendations on regulations under the Animal Welfare Act so that we can see active improvement in the welfare of dogs.

The Dog Advisory Council, under Professor Sheila Crispin’s chairmanship, was funded entirely through the generosity of patrons, principally the Dogs Trust, the RSPCA, the Blue Cross and the PDSA. It operates with a budget of only £25,000, yet the Government give £225,000 to the Farm Animal Welfare Council. There seems to be a slight imbalance within the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in the treatment of farm animals and companion animals. I hope that the Minister will take those facts back to his Department. If nothing else, we are a nation of animal lovers, and we need to take more seriously the welfare of companion animals such as dogs and cats.

Obviously, it is welcome that micro-chipping will be mandatory from April 2016, but I urge the Minister to bring the date forward. We need a comprehensive list of registered dogs as soon as possible, and I see no reason to delay this for another two years. Currently, more than 100,000 dogs are stolen, abandoned or lost each year. If lost, the owner can suffer huge emotional turmoil. If a dog is abandoned, it is a crime. The urgent introduction of micro-chipping will help us to reduce dramatically the numbers of stray dogs on our streets.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

Unless dogs are bred properly and socialised properly, they may become violent in adulthood. That is a big challenge for us, but we have increased sentences for those responsible for attacks on people by dogs, and we have changed the law so that prosecutions can be brought even when an attack takes place on private property.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

T7. Given the Secretary of State’s popular and correct decision to cancel the private finance initiative credit given to the Kingsland incinerator, and given that incineration is near the bottom of the waste hierarchy, does the Minister agree that the green investment bank should be investing in green technologies higher up the hierarchy, and that that does not include flawed incineration projects?

Managing Flood Risk

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Monday 3rd March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Miss McIntosh]

It was the worst weather event that we have had. My hon. Friend’s intervention raises the very interesting question of why the Bellwin formula was not raised for the roads, bridges and houses that were damaged in 2012-13. He is right about the number of houses flooded. I think that more houses were flooded in the whole of the Yorkshire region in 2012-13 than were flooded in total this year. I supported the bid by North Yorkshire county council to increase the Bellwin limit and I will come on to that in a moment.

My hon. Friend also raises the very interesting question—this supports my argument—of where the funding will come from. I absolutely agree that most of the flood defences held and that many more houses would have flooded than was the case. The House should celebrate that, but where will the money come from to repair those flood defences that held this time but that will have been damaged by the sustained bashing from the storm?

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that in Norfolk the vicious tidal surge of 5 and 6 December reached record levels along parts of the coast and in King’s Lynn in particular. Is she aware that the tidal defences held up remarkably well? There have been some breaches, which the Environment Agency repaired very quickly. Does my hon. Friend agree that managed retreat anywhere along the Norfolk coast would not be an acceptable policy under any circumstances?

[Miss McIntosh]

I will come on to the role that farmers can play. Ever since I was the MEP for the whole of the Essex coast for five years, I have not been a big fan of managed retreat and have never been persuaded that it is a good thing.

We should recognise the money that the Government have very generously provided. I believe it is £2 million for tourism and £10 million for farms, but it would seem that we need an extra £20 million year-on-year increase in flood management capital funding over the next 25 years to keep pace with the increasing flood threat. I look forward to hearing my hon. Friend the Minister’s response as to the Government’s view on why that might not happen.

Another great development would be more flexibility to transfer money between capital maintenance expenditure and activities. I also urge my hon. Friend the Minister to grab this opportunity to review either the Treasury Green Book or the Environment Agency’s point-scoring system. We heard evidence that the cost-benefit ratio for household protection schemes is 5:1, but that for all other assets it is 18:1. This is, therefore, a good opportunity to address that. During Prime Minister’s questions some two or three weeks ago, the Prime Minister said from the Dispatch Box that all flood funding was up for review. Did he mean a review of the scoring system, which is long overdue? Although it was visited in a modest way in 2010, I believe it should be reviewed from top to bottom.

We concluded that the current model for allocating flood defence funding to protecting property is biased towards urban rather than rural areas. In fact, our report argues that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has failed to protect rural areas and that there is a risk to food security as more land becomes at risk of flooding.

I attended the National Farmers Union farming conference last week. The NFU states that 58% of the most productive land—that is, grade 1, farmed English land—is within a floodplain. Our report states that 14% of agricultural land in England and Wales is at risk of flooding from rivers and the sea. A drop in our food self-sufficiency raises a long-term question over ongoing food security.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas]

Dredging is often pulled out of the hat as if it were a silver bullet. Dredging can have a positive effect if it is done in certain places at certain times. In other places, it does not have a positive effect. In the Somerset levels, it could have been done a little earlier, but it certainly would not have massively reduced what we are seeing now. We need a much more holistic response, which is what Sussex Wildlife Trust is talking about.

[Mr Bellingham]

Is the hon. Lady aware that the defences around the Norfolk, Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire fens are comprehensive and holistic in that they involve not only tidal barrages, but pumping stations, relief channels and dredging? That combined approach protects a vast amount of Britain’s farmland.

[Caroline Lucas]

I am very pleased to hear that, but the comprehensive approach that I am talking about must involve a much wider evaluation of how we use land. For example, we must consider what use farm subsidies are being put to and whether they are inadvertently encouraging unhelpful ways of using land. I am referring to something rather larger than the holistic approach the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

First, we know that allowing development on floodplains puts more people at risk. Secondly, we know that compacted soil and damaged uplands channel water downstream faster. Thirdly, we know that climate change is making extreme rainfall events more frequent and intense. I will outline briefly the solutions we need in each of those areas—solutions that work with nature, rather than against it.

The Government’s ongoing attacks on the planning system are a real problem. Sensible, long-term development control in the public interest is being sacrificed at the altar of mindless, short-term GDP growth at any cost. Development on floodplains and in areas of high flood risk, not just now but for the lifetime of a housing development, needs a stronger, more accountable planning system. We must ditch the current approach that casts sensible planning rules and regulations as a barrier to growth and planners, according to the Prime Minister, as enemies of enterprise.

Crucially, we know that not all decisions about development on floodplains are taken by local planning authorities. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government can use his power to call in or recover a planning application. So why is it so difficult to obtain basic information about this from his Department? A written question that I tabled back on 5 February remains unanswered. I hope that the message will reach the Secretary of State and that he will tell us today how many times he has exercised his power to call in a planning application to approve or reject housing or commercial development on a floodplain or in an area of flood risk.

It is simply not good enough for the Secretary of State to point the finger at local councils, nor is it good enough for him to say that 99% of proposed new residential units that the Environment Agency objected to on floodplain grounds were decided in line with Environment Agency advice when the decisions are known. What about all the others? Why will the Government not give us the full picture? The fact that my question remains unanswered a whole month later raises suspicions about whether the Secretary of State has been overruling local authorities or Environment Agency advice and allowing development to proceed in areas at risk of flooding. I hope that that is not the case, but we need to see the statistics and we need to see them now.

A month ago, I also tabled a written question on the impact of recent and future flooding on small businesses.

Fly-Grazing of Horses

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Damian Hinds]

I raised the question whether there might be different or innovative ways of using publicly owned land, and I am sure the Minister will have heard that suggestion.

Earlier, we talked about the challenge of traceability; large numbers of horses are not microchipped. Clearly, more enforcement is needed in that regard, and I ask the Minister whether he has any thoughts on how traceability can be better enforced, especially given that free microchipping is available to many people today but is not taken up.

It appears that the existence of a national equine database of some sort is important—it could, at least, make the current system work better. It might be possible to find a simpler, less costly version of the former national equine database to make traceability possible while minimising the attendant additional costs.

Most importantly, we need to make enforcement less onerous; that is the most critical immediate-term challenge, especially given the legislation across the border in Wales. We need to make the removal of horses more straightforward, and there are two, and possibly more, ways we might do that. First, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) outlined, we could amend the 1971 Act to bring it into line with the best of the private Acts.

Alternatively, we could replicate the legislation going through in Wales. Either way, there needs to be a way to reduce the waiting time, during which owners can claim ownership. In Wales, it has been reduced from 14 days to seven—although seven is not a magic number; we could have another number. Whether the holding period is seven days or whatever, we also need to stipulate that horses do not have to be held on the land they were found on and that they can be held on the enforcer’s land, which puts the onus on the owners to come forward.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that problems are often exacerbated by travelling communities that allow their horses to go on land where they should not be? Plenty of travelling communities, however, do control their horses and ponies very effectively and graze them in the right places.

What advice would my hon. Friend give councils regarding better liaison with travelling communities? Will he also join me in paying tribute to two organisations that have been very busy in Norfolk? One is World Horse Welfare, at Snetterton, and the other is Redwings, at Hapton. They do an absolutely tireless job in helping to solve this problem by taking in many horses that should never have been abandoned.

[Damian Hinds]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in those commendations. I echo what he said, which in turn echoed what the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) said, about the large numbers of people who look after their horses extremely well. It seems that these irresponsible practices are concentrated among a relatively small number of individuals. As to my hon. Friend’s point about giving advice to local authorities, I am sure the Minister will pick it up.

On objectives for a legislative solution, we somehow have to break the cycle of horses being seized, going to auction and being bought back, with the result that the problem never decreases. Whatever the legislative solution, there must be options for rehoming and, sadly, for euthanising, where that is unavoidable in the worst cases.

Badger Cull

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question, in which she raises one of the most pertinent points: there is no single solution. Removing wildlife alone is not the solution. There has to be parallel, and equally rigorous, work on cattle. There must be a mixture of both measures. That is the lesson to be learned from the countries I have recently visited, as I was just about to go on to explain.

In recent months, I have been to Australia, New Zealand and the Republic of Ireland, and when I was in Opposition I went to the United States of America. All those countries have made great progress in dealing with very similar problems to ours by dealing with the wildlife reservoir and bearing down on the disease in cattle.

In Australia, a national eradication programme spanning almost three decades enabled official freedom from bovine TB—an infection rate of less than 0.2% under OIE rules—be achieved in 1997. Its comprehensive package of measures to tackle the disease in domestic cattle and wildlife included rigorous culling of feral water buffalo. Australia’s achievement is even more impressive when one considers the difficulty of the terrain and the size of the area over which such an extensive programme of testing and culling took place.

After my visit to Australia, I went to New Zealand. Its comprehensive and successful package of measures to eradicate the disease has focused on the primary wildlife reservoir of brush-tailed possums. As a result of its efforts, New Zealand is on the verge of achieving BTB-free status. The number of infected cattle and deer herds has reduced from more than 1,700 in the mid-1990s to just 66 in 2012.

The Republic of Ireland, too, has a comprehensive eradication programme, which includes the targeted culling of badgers in areas where the disease is attributed to wildlife. From massive problems in the 1960s—160,000 cattle were slaughtered in 1962 alone—the Irish authorities have turned things around to the extent that the number of reactor cattle has reduced to just 18,000 in 2012, a fall of 10,000 in the last 10 years. On their own figures, herd incidence has fallen to just 4.26%—a statistic we would dearly love to have here.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is explaining the Government’s policy very well indeed. Does he have any idea what proportion of badgers culled in the Republic of Ireland were carriers of TB? No one wants to see badgers culled unless there is no alternative, but many of them are diseased and will in due course die and suffer great pain.

[Mr Paterson]

That is a very helpful question. On first analysis, the estimate was about 16%, but the Irish have done a huge amount of work on this, and I admire the scientific manner in which they have gone about it, and on detailed analysis and after careful autopsy the proportion can be seen to be three or four times higher than that. That shows why this disease is so difficult to deal with: it is difficult to identify in both wildlife and cattle.

Agricultural Wages Board

Lord Bellingham Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

Equally, we could say that the introduction of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority deals with some of the working conditions problems that Opposition Members have highlighted in a way that makes the AWB ever more redundant.

To return to the 1993 debate, the then Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Gillian Shephard, held a consultation. A small number of us in the farming industry said that the AWB should go; that it was out of date and anachronistic; that farming should not be treated as a special case; and that the AWB read like something from the 1950s. It tended to be the larger, more forward-thinking farmers who took that view, led by a large salads company, the G’s group, which was run by Guy Shropshire. It was not one of my most successful campaigns. The Government had some 3,500 responses to the consultation, of which only 11 were in favour of abolition. I was one of those 11. That highlights the massive swing in opinion. Opposition Members have highlighted the current consultation, but 40% of people who responded to it have said that abolition is the right thing to do.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

I want quickly to comment on a point before my hon. Friend moves on. Surely gangs now have that protection. They are totally different from the average farm worker in East Anglia, where very often someone is in charge of £500,000-worth of equipment and on a very high wage, on a farm that 40 years ago might have employed 40 people, but now employs two people who are highly skilled, very responsible and well paid.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend is right and underlines my point that the GLA has made the AWB ever more redundant. Those at the bottom on those low incomes have new protections.

One big thing in this debate compared with the last one—it is important to recognise this—is that the National Farmers Union is on the right side. For once, it is saying that we should get rid of the AWB because it is out of date. In 1993, the NFU let down its members. David Naish, the then president, supported the retention of the AWB, and he was wrong to do so. The NFU board of directors at the time was out of touch and behind the curve, but the NFU now recognises that things need to change and fully supports and endorses the abolition of the AWB. If even the NFU supports the abolition of the AWB, it is time to act. Another big change since 1993 is, as many hon. Members have said, the introduction of the minimum wage, which is yet another measure that makes the AWB out of date and no longer necessary.

How does the AWB frustrate rather than improve career development in the agricultural sector? The most important thing is the huge lack of flexibility. The board is based on old-style wage grade rates dating from the ’60s and ’70s, and completely ignores the fact that, in the most progressive farm businesses, many people are paid a salary and have management responsibilities. The best farm businesses have profit shares and payment by results. Piece rates are increasingly used when people earn far in excess of the minimum wage rates. Those modern day pay practices are completely ignored by the agricultural wages order, which can frustrate the development of more progressive pay policies in the farming industry and keep it trapped in a 1950s mindset.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I start by declaring an interest: as deputy general secretary of the old Transport and General Workers Union and then Unite, I represented agricultural workers for much of my working life, and was proud so to do.

I start by celebrating England’s green and pleasant land—our hills, our valleys, our forests, our farms, our rivers and our seashores, captured in that great hymn to the countryside, Linden Lea:

“Within the woodlands, flow’ry gladed,

By the oak tree’s mossy moot,

The shining grass-blades, timber-shaded,

Now do quiver under foot…

And brown-leaved fruits a-turning red,

In cloudless sunshine, overhead…

To where, for me, the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.”

But elsewhere in that great hymn to the English countryside it reads:

“I don’t dread a peevish master;

Though no man may heed my frowns”.

That great hymn captured both the beauty of our countryside and another reality, which is that all too often the countryside has been scarred by the unfair treatment of workers and rural poverty. I have worked with farmers all my working life, so I am the first to acknowledge the changes in the industry and the many very good farming industry employers, but there remain to this day real problems.

The 19th century, from Tolpuddle onwards, was a century of struggle, with real progress being made in the 20th century, but before anyone argues today that exploitation in the countryside is a thing of the past, let me say this. I listened to the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Question Time speaking, and rightly so, about modern-day slavery. Some of the worst examples of slavery, historically and in the modern day, were practised by gangmasters, as was seen at its most obscene in the tragic death of 22 young Chinese cockle-pickers on the bleak, cold shores of Morecambe bay.

As a consequence of that incident, I chaired the coalition of support that brought the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 into law. It was a private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan). There was a remarkable coalition from plough to plate, from the National Farmers Union to the supermarkets. I shared platforms with Baroness Gillian Shepherd, and we stood together, arguing for a measure that was essential to tackle some of the most obscene practices in the world of work in our country. Sadly, now, we are seeing, on the one hand, the scaling back of the operation of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and, on the other hand, the proposed abolition of the AWB.

It was Winston Churchill who first took action, as President of the Board of Trade, in 1908. He argued then that we needed fair treatment and to act to keep labour on the land. That was legislated for by the Attlee Government and championed by Harold Macmillan. That is 100 years of history now about to be torn up. I absolutely do not accept the argument that the Agricultural Wages Board is no longer relevant in modern times.

[Mr Bellingham]

The hon. Gentleman obviously has a great deal of expertise, and I agree entirely with his points about the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. I supported that Bill, as did a number of my colleagues, when we were in opposition. After the war, many farmers employed perhaps 50 or 60 people on what would now be considered a smallish family farm, and there was of course a need for a trade union and for the Agricultural Wages Board. It would have been difficult for those farmers to negotiate with their farm workers without such a board. Now, however, those farmers employ a tiny number of people who are much better paid because of the relationship between the farmer and the workers which never existed in the past.

[Jack Dromey]

We have an atomised work force. There has been a progressive change in employment patterns from what was typically the case 50 years ago to smaller, more flexible work forces with a lot of contract labour and very few people being permanently employed on farms. Having said that, the statistics show that the majority of those covered by the AWB still need the minimum standards that the board lays down. I will come to that point in a moment.

I do not accept that the board is an historical anachronism—far from it—not least because half the work force is aged 55 and over and we still need to recruit and retain people to work on the land. Nor is it true to suggest that the board was set in aspic and never changed. Over the years, as a consequence of some very good dialogue, a modernisation process took place.

The proposal for the AWB’s abolition is fundamentally wrong for four reasons. The first involves fair treatment. This is not just about minimum standards. Crucially, it is also about other conditions of employment, which really matter. The simple reality is that the difference between the statutory arrangements and the board’s arrangements will be that, in future, it will be possible for a farmer to pay someone who is off sick £81.60 a week less. Farming is a dangerous occupation for some, and we often see high levels of sickness as a consequence of the work.

Secondly, abolishing the AWB is an inefficient way of proceeding. I asked the House of Commons Library to research the costs of the board, and I was surprised by the answer. I knew that it was lean and effective, but even I was surprised to learn that its administrative costs were £179,000 a year and its enforcement costs were £150,000. That fully functioning Agricultural Wages Board therefore cost a grand total of £329,000.

Now, however, we shall see tens of thousands of negotiations taking place throughout the agriculture sector. I accept that, depending on the nature of the employment pattern, people can often get paid more than the level strictly laid down by the AWB. That happens all the time, as a result of a demand for a particular skill. However, the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) was right to say that, other than in circumstances of exceptional demand, it is convenient for farmers to use the framework laid down by the board. Farmers have said that to me, too. In future, however, we shall see negotiation after negotiation consuming the time and effort of our farmers.