Our Future
Looking to the future, the NFU is to some extent entering uncharted waters.
For the first time, not in 100 years, but in almost 150, we are looking at a situation in which prosperity and growth are delivered to British farming, not by political intervention, but by market forces.
The main problems for the NFU may, therefore, be the problems of success. These will certainly include keeping consumer opinion on the farmer’s side, when the sympathy card is no longer there to play; as well as resisting a new wave of regulatory threats unleashed on an industry perceived as being well able to cover the extra costs involved.
Climate change is certain to be a huge factor in the equation, offering both opportunities, as the bioeconomy develops to replace the fossil fuels economy, and threats, with livestock farming and its methane emissions very much in the firing line.
Positioning the industry, and influencing its practices, so that is seen to be a force for good in the climate change agenda will be a vital role, and not necessarily an easy one, given the number of people in the environmental movement who see broad-acre, science-based farming as part of the problem, rather than as part of the solution.
Another key concern for the NFU of the future will be the balance between the sectors. There is a very real danger of a corn/horn divide developing, with most of the opportunities on one side of the equation, and most of the threats on the other.
A future in which the east of the country is given over to intensive arable production, and the west to tourism and niche markets is all too easy to envisage, but it wouldn’t be good for farming.
As always, the best chance of securing a strong and successful farming industry for the future lies in maintaining the partnership between the flexibility offered by the family businesses on which farming is built, and the strength provided by the NFU.
If the history of the last 100 years proves anything, it is that the farming community and the NFU make a winning combination, capable of rising to almost any challenge – and there’ll be no shortage of those!
