Keystone

I fear that that there is currently a total lack of understanding of the economy relating to farming and current government policy will favour large corporates to such an extent that may reduce the resilience provided by many family farms in favour of corporate largeness. Here I take a brief look at that keystone.

The ordinary working farmer has no time to spare for sitting in London or elsewhere on committees, or lobbying mostly urban MP's that have a limited view of them and their work. Let's face it, all they wish to do is farm and look after their crops and animals. This has worked against the farmer as they have become fewer and fewer and their voice smaller and smaller.

The simple fact is that the reduction in the numbers working directly in agriculture has been largely achieved through increased efficiency in their ability to create food. In 1965 one person engaged in UK agriculture produced enough food for 23 people. By 1982 this figure was 42 people. In 2023 this figure leapt to one UK farmer producing enough food for 260 people.

This sounds marvellous, as indeed it is, but it needs a balance in thinking that is vital to the understanding of both the rural and the wider economy. You need to look at the layers of the process to understand that farming is a keystone industry.

There is barely a single man in British farming that can produce one gram of food without the aid of someone else who is not deemed to be working in agriculture at all. The man employed in Pocklington to produce fertiliser; the lorry drivers transporting seed to the farm in Norfolk; the vet examining livestock at Acklington Mart; the manufacturer of potato graders in Spilsby; the elevator producer in Holbeach; the agricultural engineers based in Alnwick. I can continue with a vast list of people just on the supply side of farming. Yes, many inputs are imported, but this process of importing provides revenue and jobs in this country as well as a