Cereal growers are set for a serious decline in production unless EU regulators can be persuaded to shift their crop protection stance from the current hazard-driven assessment to a more risk-based process.
“We could be looking at a 20-30% drop in production, for example, if farmers lose the right to treat blackgrass in winter wheat with Kerb,” farmers attending Cereals 2014 in Cambridgeshire this week were told by NFU vice-president Guy Smith.
“Such a move, which would force growers to switch to lower yielding spring crops, is a real possibility if the EU Parliament continues to pursue an over-regulated approach to the policing of crop protection products.”
Launching the union’s new a ‘Healthy Harvest’ report, Mr Smith said that half the EU’s pesticides had been lost to growers since 2001 and that half of those that remained could follow during the life of the newly elected EU Parliament.
Promising early talks on the issue with colleagues at NFU Scotland, he said that UK food production was now definitely ‘flatlining,’ with the loss of crop protection products very much at the heart of the problem.
“At a time when leading scientists are warning that within a generation the world could be facing a ‘perfect storm’ of food shortages,” said Mr Smith, “this is not the time to be taking away the tools our farmers need to produce disease-free, high-yielding crops.”
Secretary of State Owen Paterson, weighed into the same debate with a fierce defence of his own department’s efforts to get the EU to follow science on this issue.
“My mantra is to promote the rural economy and improve the environment and that means using the most advanced technology,” said the Food and Rural Affairs Minister.
He then added, however, that it didn’t mean the EU Commission “following its nose” and imposing an arbitrary ban on vital crop protection products.
The whole cautionary principle, he continued, as applied to pesticides, could amount to a “council of doom”, with such action putting companies off their search for new products, leaving everyone to fall back on old and outdated technologies.
The big Cereals event, which drew a significant number of farmers from Scotland, also featured the industry’s first reactions to the CAP reform greening package.
However, while the showground debate centred on the increased administrative burdens being imposed on growers by the new measures, farm business consultants Andersons urged producers not to over-react.
“Considering the new greening requirements is obviously important, but probably not as important for farmers as asking the question of whether or not they’re running a fundamentally profitable arable business,” said Andersons’ partner Richard King.
“Markets, exchange rates, costs and the structure of your business are equally, if not more, important than discussing the bureaucracy surrounding how you pick up your subsidy payments.
“There’s certainly a danger at present of these issues masking the bigger picture for a lot of cereals businesses.
“Farmers obviously don’t want to lose 30% of their basic payment because they’ve done something incorrect on greening, but I think we now have sufficient information for farmers to do the necessary regarding compliance.
“Beyond this, therefore, perhaps people need to be taking time out for a fundamental reappraisal of their business against the issues of falling support, the need for crop diversification, changing crop rotations maybe, blackgrass pressures and the loss of active ingredients.
“More attention on these factors, after all, may change the way they actually farm over the next five to 10 years.”
One area in particular which farmers might wish to examine, for example, was the 40% increase in UK farm machinery depreciation costs per hectare in the last five years. Starting out at £103/ha in 2007 and now on £143/ha, there is clearly room for improvement.
“You definitely want to get that figure below £100/ha, with £80 or £90 being achievable as an industry average,” said Mr King.
“That would involve a lot more cooperation between farmers, greater use of contractors, machinery rings, informal arrangements and so on.
“Such effort if certainly worth thinking about.”