It's Jam Tomorrow

Agriculture is one industry where we are always thinking about the future. 

Politicians do it all the time, looking how policy can best fit some of the challenges which are coming down the tracks. Commentators do it a lot at conferences, building confidence in their farmer audience by pointing to the world of opportunity that awaits them next year...by 2020...by 2050. The farmers, the most important people, sit and scratch their heads and wonder when things will happen today, tomorrow or next week. 

When I did an MSc at Newcastle in 2007, we did a bit of thinking about the future as well. The best bit about it was one module on 'risk' in rural areas. This largely involved sitting around drinking coffee and being pretentious and pretending that we knew everything. After we had done that bit though, we had to fast forward 10 years from that date and think about what rural areas would look like. What would be the risks? What issues would have been dealt with and how would they have changed?

We had to mock up a newspaper article and pretend that we were in 2017. I have just found it on the computer when I was looking for something else.

Of course it is ridiculous, it is meant to be to spark debate. Hopefully it is quite good fun. Take a look below (with my sincere apologies to the Guardian newspaper)

Farming and the Bank of Dave

I am a sucker for stories about chipper Northerners railing against the system, and the 'Bank of Dave' is probably one of the best. It is a true story, is a Channel 4 documentary and you can watch it yourself here. A brief summary:

• Meet Dave Fishwick, Burnley bred millionaire owner of successful minibus company.
• Sez Dave, The Banks are Bastards, they aren't lending to small businesses, Burnley is dying, there are no returns on savings and yet still banks are paying huge bonuses and we as taxpayers are bailing them out. We need a better bank. Let's do it.
• Dave sets up his own bank. They have a website here.
• Er, that's it.

Before I go on, here is Dave just so you know where we are firing:

Please note the clocks - New York and Burnley (obviously)

Of course, it isn't all plain sailing. Dave is told by everyone that it simply isn't possible, that he would need to meet with the FSA to get a banking licence (he tries, and is still waiting) and that the plan would never work. What follows is the most heart warming and life affirming documentary I have seen in a long while. Now open and operating is Burnley Savings and Loans Ltd, paying 5% interest to savers, providing small unsecured loans to local people and businesses and turning a small profit after all overheads which is donated to local charities. I could bang on further, but just watch it. 

What though, has this got to do with farming? This idea, I think, has got everything to do with farming.

Attracting young people, or shall we say 'new entrants' instead, seems to be the perennial problem in agriculture. Far too many column inches have been filled with this topic, including a fair amount of musing from me. I think it is all getting a bit boring. The problem is not a lack of people who are interested, it is a lack of opportunity.

Aside from the problem of actually getting a new entrant onto their own farm is surely access to capital. Not access to capital to buy a farm, land, or big machinery but getting hold of a bit of cash when you have no money to start with, when you have no assets and when you probably have a significant student loan. You do not have any financial support in terms of single farm payments because this is connected to land ownership and that's the problem, you do not own any land but really really want to. The only thing you do have is a hard working attitude and bucket-loads of enthusiasm. Where does a new entrant go? I think he should go to the Bank of Dave, or even better, something very similar set up by farmers, for farmers to help guarantee the future of the industry in the UK.

It would work like this. Established farmers who have assets and cash (because come on, there is money around it just isn't always easily accessible) would invest in a fund set up and managed by a group of forward thinking farmers. This would pay a reasonable amount of interest, perhaps 5%, and would then loan out this money to new entrants. There would be no age limit on applicants (who says a new entrant has to be young?) but they would have to have a business plan like any other application for borrowing money. They would be visited by a successful farmer who would talk about their idea, share some of their experience and make a decision on that basis. The new entrant could get a loan for anything that helped them on their way, or took their business to the next level. Any profits in the bank after operating costs would be given to farming charities. Paperwork would be kept to a minimum, the focus would be on the relationship between the investors and the borrowers and it would be run by farmers, for farmers without any unnecessary interference.  

In terms of financing it, it should be seen as a good business deal anyway, but it could be advertised on the basis that (ooof, controversial) farmers have started to tip up 1% of their single farm payments to invest (there is a return remember) in the future of the industry. Back-of-fag-packet figures would show that with a very rough single farm payment income of £3.3bn per year into the UK, a 1% slush fund set up by farmers (by them alone, not mandatory, not by government, just on a voluntary basis) would start off with £33m to lend out if everyone got on board. Would a farmer receiving £10k in SFP invest £100? Could a farmer who receives £1m in SFP be prepared to invest £10k?

A runner? Or shall I get back off my soapbox? Maybe it's something to float here.