With bodge-it budgets, double dips, pasty taxes, missed deadlines and fruit ninja obsessives in charge, it seems that all we hear about is depressing news about a government that isn’t delivering for Britain. So let’s talk about something that is delivering for Britain.
Let’s talk agriculture.
In 2011, farming added £8.84bn to the UK economy – a 25 per cent increase on 2010. Around 70 per cent of farmland is farmed under an agri-environment scheme, and if that isn’t enough, the industry is going to need 6,000 new entrants every year up to 2020.
Farming has the innovation, the demand and the passion to continue thriving.
But something’s missing: the infrastructure. Rural public transport is still about as useful as a promise from Nick Clegg, affordable rural housing remains a dream, and, though we’ve got first-class agricultural colleges, it’s still absurdly difficult for new farmers to enter the industry. The enthusiasm and passion of young farmers is infectious. It is the job of policymakers not to let them down.
But the coalition have.
Seventy per cent of English authorities have had to reduce funding for bus services, 20 per cent was cut from the bus service operating grant and diesel is on average four pence more per litre than in urban areas. A terminal lack of affordable rural housing is still strangling our rural communities and while young entrants in France get €110,000 of support; in the UK, it’s the grand sum of nothing.
The Tories said that they’d set ‘farming on fire’.
Well it’s all well and good saying that, but where on earth are the matches? The road to success is never paved with broken promises and empty words and soon if solutions to these problems aren’t presented, they’ll be as popular as Theresa May at a police conference. Some may think that even if they provide nothing to support rural communities, they’ll get away with it. But they won’t.
And they haven’t.
We saw it just three weeks ago.
We saw it in Witney. We saw it in Sevenoaks. We even saw it in Chipping Norton of all places!
Rural arguments became Labour arguments, and rural seats became Labour seats. So let’s keep on turning these rural arguments into Labour arguments all the way to 2015. In Westminster this week the fantastic Labour frontbench have been fighting to ensure that the Grocery Code Adjudicator protects producers, not supermarket profits. Labour can be seen as the party of the shires, but must follow up some superb work so far, by offering change for rural communities.
It’s time to inject that Labour campaigning zeal straight into heart of the agricultural industry as we know it. We need to offer policy taking action on the issue of affordable rural housing, taking action on the issue of public transport in rural areas and taking action to ensure that our agricultural industry is innovative, sustainable and allows young entrants to turn their passion into progress.
By packaging those ideas together, Labour can, and will, offer real solutions to rural problems and become the party of rural communities.
As agriculture keeps delivering for our country, Labour must continue to keep delivering for agriculture.
—————————————————————————————
Aled Jones is a trustee of both the Welsh & National Federation of Young Farmers and co-founder of the NFYFC UK Youth Forum
—————————————————————————————
For more on Rural Labour, check out Progress magazine December 2011 or its four Rural Labour articles grouped here
—————————————————————————————
Aled ,
As a Londoner born and bred, I know zip about rural issues but this seems a reasonable stance that you take.
What you need is to get elected to something to get people to stand up and take notice. Just like the general idea of southern discomfort there should be no “no go areas” for Labour if it wants to be a party of government again.
I’m sure that there is more than one elephant in the room but I’m thinking of this one; I now live in the suburbs and the truth is the tories are racists who have moved out of urban London i.e. White Flight.
I have family connections in the South West and again many live there because they like the fact that it is monocultural. This is a huge problem for a progressive centre left party to overcome.
And I am sure rural seats can indeed become labour seats again. But don’t mention the foxes!!
I live in a rural area, surrounded by farmers. As a Labour Party activist I have been wanting some ammunition to work with here, and am hoping that we will some action from PLP on rural issues. Affordable transport, both public AND fuel prices are big issues, so are things like planning, but what feedback I do get, is largely based around the hunting and badger issue. Needless to say I can’t support a return to legal fox hunting, and oppose a badger cull, but the silence from the PLP about these issues is deafening. I’d like some firm policy ideas to take to people.