Is anyone reading the deeper messages from the Red Tractor dispute?

Before anything, I will say that the Red Tractor Scheme was a good idea, even though with my consumer hat on, I’m not convinced it really meant all that much to shoppers.

On that note rests the question of who really gets the value from it, and from that perspective, its possible to begin joining up the dots regarding the latest row that has developed around future changes and the relationship between the Scheme and ‘green farming’.

Whilst everything looks very simple, the truth is that complexity rules the day and many of us don’t understand the relationships and motives that lie behind many of the problems that agriculture and businesses are facing.

At face value, most people simply wouldn’t believe what’s actually happening and what corporate interests are doing to entire industries as they seek to control every part of the food supply chain across the UK. Acting as if even the farms they buy produce from, are no more than facilities that they own.

Regrettably, big money interests want more profit than they already have and they have successfully hidden behind the lie thar is ‘free markets’ and yes, Globalisation, to trash genuine government and regulations and then replace it with a system of their own that they control.

My concern is that whilst overtly created with the best of intentions for Farming and Food Production, devices like the green agenda are just new ways of ratcheting down more and more control of the food production system. So that every penny of profit or ‘the fat’ that exists at any point within the entire food supply chain is controlled and funnelled into the hands of those who control it.

Consider this scenario:

Many farmers – perhaps every farmer, has at some point signed up to some kind of contract sale arrangement for their crops, animals or produce, perhaps with a dairy, a big retailer or an agent of some kind.

Within these relationships, it has been considered normal or necessary to share just about every bit of data about the farm, what equipment is used, the number of animals, number and type of staff – and much, much more.

Afterall, what does it matter when you are working for the same goals and these are people you can trust?

It’s likely that right now, an unworldly economics graduate, perhaps sat in a commuter town HQ, somewhere near London, is looking at every detail their employer has hoovered up through this process of ‘granting contracts’ or ‘beneficial arrangements’ of some kind. That’s the one mentioned above where they have insisted that they are the farmers friend and that all this information helps to raise standards, meet targets, and no doubt of late ‘helps to achieve Net Zero, or make the industry green’.

What they didn’t tell you is that from this data, this analyst or someone like them that the farmer will never meet, can work out exactly what everything is costing on that farm. They can then then use statistical averages and data of the kind that inform our politicians, to make decisions on what the farmer is ‘entitled’ to earn – knowing exactly what their spreadsheets have told them the farmer should ‘charge’ to cover the costs of their ‘wage’ and absolutely everything else.

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Yes, the chances are that the companies and retailers that farmers ‘sell’ to are working out what they believe those farmers need so that they earn the average wage (if they are lucky), and without the farmer even being aware, nothing is any longer that farm business owners’ choice.

If farms are dependent on these companies and their contracts – no matter how well intended or how they were sold, the business that the farmer is contracted too basically owns the farm.

As such, farmers are right to be very concerned about where so-called standards are taking the industry, as the level of data and therefore control that these interests will have and will be able to exert, is only likely to grow, whilst politicians continue to fail to represent the interests not only of the food producing industries, but of the public at large.

Right now, the destination is already over the cliff. But it could get worse, with Supermarkets now trying to claw back whatever they can from what they clearly believe to be over generous relationships with the key suppliers within the UKs Food Supply Chain.