Riding the crest of the Brexit Wave

Thank you ⁦Western Daily Press for publishing by thought piece today. Farming through uncertainty seems to be a way of life .. ⁦⁦ 

 

As well as being a Professor at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, I am involved in our family farming business, which is predominantly livestock based. This year, amidst the COVID lockdown, was the 30th anniversary of becoming a wife of a farmer and subsequently the mother of farmers! This is a long time to be an active member of a family business which has experienced many changes, twists and turns over the years. 

We have faced BSE and the loss of the beef market; the Foot and Mouth Outbreak in 2001; Bovine TB, the 2007 global recession, and now we have avian influenza, COVID and Brexit, not to forget climate change, and net zero carbon as an ambition. When you then look at the South West as a farming region, we can add in severe flooding and droughts and for good measure can throw in the odd bit of Schmallenberg in 2011. So it goes on, and in all that time we have tried to adapt and move our business forward (along with every other farming business), and ride the crest of whatever wave was crashing on our shore at the time. Farming life can be pretty uncertain, and you wouldn’t be in it if you weren’t prepared to take a little risk now and then, and sometimes a lot of risk. 

Who knows what the Brexit agreement will bring? It still is not clear how it will affect farming businesses, trading agreements, or the standards that farm outputs have to meet in the coming year and going forward. How do we know, as we develop our short-term and long-term farming business plans, what money will be available to farmers from the Government to support the provision of public goods? Putting it bluntly-we are in the dark. 

I spoke at a business school five or so years ago and in my talk I used the term “generational investment.” One of the students in the audience asked me what that term meant as they had never heard it before in their lectures. I explained that “It is investing in something as a business where the payback is so far in the future that you personally will never reap the reward from the original investment.” It was a lively discussion that followed about the rate of return on capital and what could be expected in most industries and the realities of farming. These are some of the decisions we now face as farmers. 

Every business in the UK, including farming, is preparing to ride the crest of the imminent Brexit wave. Farmers will, as always, be as agile as possible and try to adapt to change within the constraints of the natural, physical and financial resources on the farm and their skillsets too… but, we can’t change a farming system overnight. When our neighbours drilled their winter cereals in the field, they had no idea what the yield will be next year or the price… that is farming. When we put our rams in with the ewes three weeks ago we did so in the certain knowledge that we have no idea what the price will be when the lambs come to market in nine months time; that’s farming.