What makes a good NFU president? Difficult isn’t it? There are so many different sectors to cover, to understand, so many different issues, so many different fears to hear. You have to be caring, diplomatic, bold, objective... the list goes on and the job is very demanding.
But as the saying goes - you can’t please everyone all the time, although as NFU president you are expected to at least try. Current responsibility lieswith Peter Kendall who now has his feet well and truly under the table and sees one of his main challenges as reconnecting the public with farming.
“The public are demanding more and more knowledge of the food they eat, so it is our job to give them the information they want, but also educate them as to what farming is actually about, the processes we go through and the effort and investment we are making on their behalf. Communication remains a big problem for us,” Kendall tells Commercial Grower.
Kendall’s aim of bringing farmers and growers closer together with the public is not rocket science, but displays a real understanding of what has been lacking in the past few years. “Both the agriculture and horticulture sectors have been criticised in the press quite heavily over the last decade. You only need to think of the Mad Cows disease case, use of pesticides, the polytunnel debate, to see how we have been shown in a bad light in the public’s eyes, and they need to have an opportunity to see what a fantastic job this industry does day in, day out on their behalf, and see the reality of the situation we are in and the way we operate.”
Kendall speaks with a real passion and he also talks about horticulture and agriculturebeing as one. It is hard to work out whether this a good thing for growers who have had a long, well documented fight over the last decade for horticulture to have a real voice within the NFU.
Growers won that battle with the introduction of the Board for Horticulture. “It is vital we see horticulture and agriculture as one within this organisation. The horticulture sector has faced some of the most difficult challenges it has ever faced in the last five or six years and it should be very proud of what it has achieved under very difficult circumstances,” says Kendall.
“It still faces many pressures today but is moving very quickly in the right direction. There are some fantastic examples of best practice and some fantastic models of what food production businesses should be like in today’s economic climate.”
Kendall says agriculture can still learn a lot from the horticulture sector, especially in terms of subsides. “We have to move in the direction of self sufficiency with agriculture. We can no longer rely on subsides to be the answer to all our prayers and horticulture is the best example to us all how businesses can work very effectively without them. Set aside, for example, needs to be abolished as soon as possible and then we can look at really moving forward on this.”
After a month of floods, and a long, hot summer last year coupled with rising production costs, Kendall has been quick to warn retailers and the public that cheap food is coming to an end. “Food has never been cheaper. We currently spend less than nine percent of our income on food compared with nearly 25 percent 40 years ago,” he stresses. “We don’t want consumers to think farmers are being greedy. The costs of production and the market will dictate prices and you can’t have cheap food without damaging your security of supply or the environment. It’s been a disappointing 20 years and I’m glad we’re moving out of the era of cheap food. I, for one, will not miss it.”
Kendall is also keen that horticulture continues to address environment issues. “Growers have realised early on that that they have to be in tune with what the consumer is thinking on environment issues and I am pleased to see they have addressed issues such as climate change head on,” he says. But he adds: “The role we have to play as a support organisation is helping to make sure that targets set on specific issues are realistic and ensure the business can still be run profitably.”
Kendall is mainly referring to targets such as the one set by government on peat reduction, which many thought was unrealistic from the outset. “We want to send out the message that as an industry we are willing to tackle whatever needs to be tackled, but it has to be thought through and money has to be invested in alternatives and new ways of doing things.
“Farmers and growers are uniquely placed to be able to help adaptation to climate change through systems like rainwater harvesting, increased water efficiency, on-farm reservoirs and sustainable soil management. But agriculture can also offer significant opportunities for combating climate change, through the production of renewable energy, through systems such as anaerobic digestion.”
Kendall stresses that education and the transfer of knowledge are also important ‘if we want to make sure farmers are in a position to continue to respond to the challenges and projects like Farming Futures, which have been set up to help advise farmers about what they can do, have a vital role to play.’
Another big challenge high up on Kendall’s agenda is land use. He wants to make sure that every piece of farming land in the country is used to its maximum potential. “By that I don’t mean we want to flog the hell out of every piece of land, I mean we need to make sure that we are making use of the land we have. The rising need for new houses in this country has meant there is less of it around so we need to think about what we do.”
He uses the developmentof biofuels as one example where growers could capitalise. “There is no doubt alternatives such as biofuel have a big future with the way things are going, so there is opportunity there to grow the raw ingredients needed.”
Also in Kendall’s in-tray is the issue of labour. “SAWS is a big lost to horticulture,” he maintains. “It provided a well organised system to help growers help fill the labour gap in this country which is not going to get any easier, and it does seem the industry has been penalised for a failure in foreign policy elsewhere, which shouldn’t have affected our industry in the way it has. Whether we will get another similar scheme is a difficult question to answer but I know there are people here at the NFU and elsewhere in the industry who recognise we certainly need something,” he adds.
He also hopes the organisation’s links with Europe can help reduce the amount of red tape in the industry. “People tell us we are not as strong on the lobbying front as we were but I think we still can be effective. Most of it is behind the scenes. We have a strong presence in Brussels and I hope we can influence at that level as well. Growers are fighting against too much red tape day in, day out and while that is not just down to Europe, it can surely help if our voice is heard there too.”
Kendall wants the NFU’s voice to be made loud and clear when it comes to the retailers as well. “We have witnessed supermarket power grow to levels we probably never thought they would, but that has been good for farmers and growers in many ways. Yes, some have been treated unfairly, and we need to find the right process to make sure this kind of thing is independently audited and that growers are treated fairly and with respect.
“They need to have somewhere they can go without being in fear of losing theircontracts.It’s not right to see a grower dropped from a contract without any apparent reason, but in the last two years we have seen less of that and the retailers have realised that they need to develop long term relationships with growers. I know that is Justin King’s philosophy at Sainsbury’s,and others as well such as Waitrose.”
So all in all, Peter Kendall talks a good game. It is more than encouraging to see him think the same way as some growers do and they can only hope the NFU continues to raise the bar in terms of its commitment to growers. But he will only go down in history as one of the best NFU presidents if he actually achieves all he has set out to do, and sadly only once he has gone will this probably be fully recognised. As past presidents have found out, the NFU is a difficult beast to handle, but on the evidence seen since his arrival in early 2006, Kendall could be the very man to tame it and help improve life for growers as well.
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