FOR those of us who haven’t heard of him – and I must confess I had no idea who he was until a few weeks ago – the name Ben Goldsmith was as important to the farming industry as John Smith from Nowheresville.
However, it’s a name every farmer in the country should now be aware of, because he may well start to have a very direct impact on the direction of travel that our industry now takes.
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Ben Goldsmith is the son of billionaire James Goldsmith and brother of Zac Goldsmith the Tory MP for Richmond Park. He has contributed generously to the Tory Party including £2000 directly to Michael Gove’s constituency and has also donated to the Greens.
He has now been appointed as a non-executive director to the board of DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) – a role which gives him huge influence on UK agriculture.
Farmers across the board should be very concerned indeed about this appointment.
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He is looking to provide the funding for a wildcat reintroduction programme in England, and has funded badger repopulations in the past. That in itself may not be controversial, but it would appear this is the tip of his iceberg.
When you read some of his online attacks on all types of modern farming – and hill farming in particular – and his plans for a major rewilding programme, then it may be farmers themselves who end up on the endangered species list.
Agriculture is one of the areas that Westminster is trying to grab hold of after Brexit. That means DEFRA will be the driver of the “common frameworks” that the UK Government want to pursue.
The Scottish Government could end up having no meaningful say in what they should be. If the devolved administrations do not have full input and frameworks are devised unilaterally by DEFRA as looks likely, then Goldsmith may have a bigger say in our agricultural future than the Scottish Government. Even if “sunset clauses” are put in to the mix, where powers are returned to Holyrood after seven years, that will be no comfort if the devolved administrations are not part of the process to shape the policy going forward.
The question Scottish farmers should be asking is: what will Goldsmith’s views be on whether Scotland’s land should be subsidised to allow us to continue to farm and produce food, rather than being turned into his view of a natural wilderness? If we are not represented in the framing process, who’s going to be shouting our corner against someone who believes that farmers are “environmental vandals”?
That’s a huge concern for hill farming which seems to be one of Goldsmith’s main targets as far as “ecological vandalism” is concerned.
He tweeted: “Britain’s sheep farming industry lives entirely on taxpayer subsidies.
“So you’d have thought they might go along with the wish of 99% of taxpayers to reintroduce the harmless, secretive lynx, which is protected in every other European country. But no.”
The term “harmless” is debatable if you’re a hill sheep farmer, and is a seriously challenge to his statistic on this as well.
He wants to see wolves reintroduced and was outraged that Norway had shot some because they were predating “boring sheep”, and refers to our internationally recognised heather hills as nothing more than knee high scrubby wasteland.
Now I have no doubt that Goldsmith’s views may strike a chord with some people, but by and large I’m pretty sure that most people in Scotland have a fairly pragmatic view of food production.
Our farming community work incredibly hard to produce top quality sustainable food that respects and protects one of our greatest assets – our environment. There is nothing to say that we cannot do both, and indeed particularly here in Scotland, we seem to do it rather well.
The Scottish Government have a whole smorgasbord of funding schemes to protect and enhance the environment whilst maintaining high quality food production and preventing rural depopulation and abandonment. There are schemes to plant trees, protect wetlands, plant hedges, create beetlebanks and songbird habitat, there is an array of wildlife and raptor protections and a host of other EU supported schemes aimed at reversing some of the damage done in previous ill advised CAP schemes, and maintaining our incredible biodiversity.
The Scottish Government have made it clear that quality food production is at the heart of their vision for our countryside and food industry, but not at the expense of our environment and our wildlife.
But the Scottish Governments vision means nothing if they are shut out of the framing process that develops our policies Post Brexit. The National Farmers Union of Scotland are almost a mirror image to the Scottish Government in where they see Scottish agriculture’s future prosperity.
Doubtless there are things we can do better, and there are things that others can learn from us, there may well be merit in common frameworks and have cross border compliance in certain areas. But that doesn’t mean DEFRA should be given the unilateral job of deciding what Scottish agriculture, food and drink or our environment needs are, based on the advice they are given by a Tory millionaire donor who can’t see the wood for the trees.
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