Govt Must Deliver, says NFU

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Friday, 22 November 2002

The government must deliver promised resources and policies to aid the country's flagging farm sector before it passes the point of no return, the president of the country's leading farm grouping has said.

Speaking ahead of UK agriculture's biennial Royal Smithfield show in London, National Farmers' Union President Ben Gill said producers are deserting the sector in droves, frustrated by a lack of progress promised by a radical blueprint on the future published earlier this year.

"I'm getting slowly tired of having government strategies come out which reiterate the same thing. What I want is resource put in to facilitate delivery of the said strategy," Gill told Reuters in an interview.

"We have to have delivery, delivery on deregulation, delivery on the approach of government to industry to actually enable us to become more involved in the food chain and provide a sustainable future," he added.

Gill said farmers were disappointed that changes promised in January's blueprint -- known as the Curry Report -- had not materialised as the sector reaches a critical juncture.

The report, commissioned in the wake of last year's foot-and-mouth disease crisis, said 500 million pounds was needed for a radical overhaul of farming, moving it away from intensive operation and heavy subsidies to environmentally sustainable schemes, and called on farmers to embrace change.

Farm minister Margaret Beckett welcomed the report and promised cash to deliver its core recommendations, but delivery of the sustainable strategy has yet to materialise.

"I have recognised all along that this was not just a matter of government recognising our problems -- we have to change as well. But to enable us to change, the government has to put in place the rules and regulations and infrastructure to facilitate that," Gill added.
Source: http://uk.fc.yahoo.com/f/footandmouth.html