Back to HOMEPAGE 'I spend more time on forms than farming'
Magnus Linklater
Editor: Scottish Edition, The Times
Filed 28 Sep 08
©Magnus Linklater
This article was originally published in The Times on 27th September 2008.
It is reproduced here with the kind permission of its author and of the newspaper.
Ask any farmer, and the complaint is the same: “Bloody paperwork. I spend more time filling forms than I do looking after my animals. It drives me to distraction.” I've heard those self-same words more times than I care to remember.
Most of the regulations that govern every moment of an animal's life, from birth to slaughterhouse, emanate from the EU but government departments north and south of the Border have also developed a bureaucracy that is relentless, intrusive and inflexible. The rules grow more complex every year. Successive promises from successive governments to reduce red tape have not only come to nothing, they have been replaced by yet more demands - the latest insanity being a ruling from Brussels that every lamb should carry an electronic tag whereby its every movement can be monitored.
Recently the Prince of Wales complained that excessive bureaucracy was endangering the “delicate tapestry” of rural agriculture. Some would say that tapestry has already been torn apart. Birth notification, movement notification, herd inspections, double-tagging, welfare codes, cross-compliance, bio-security - the list is endless, each new regulation trailing long and complex acronyms in its wake. Most of the edicts that come down from government make farming harder not easier. Rules forbidding the burial of dead animals on farm land. Rules outlawing the burning of rubbish. Rules controlling water-courses. Rules about dipping and clipping. And rules governing the balance between the environment and agriculture. This latter, in Scotland, has made a huge amount of work for small farmers - with very little benefit.
Once known as the Rural Stewardship Scheme, it promised grants in return for making farms more friendly to wildlife. Farmers were given instructions about how to amass points for improving the environment. It meant many hours filling in complex forms, measuring wetlands, fencing off woods. But then most of the applicants were informed that they had failed to reach the “threshold” needed to secure a grant - there was simply not enough money to go round.
©Magnus Linklater |
