Like many with a careful eye on the problems our Farmers are facing and the massive issues that currently surround everything with UK food production and the access that everyone has to food, I had a moment of hope when I first saw that simple but effective ‘No Farmers, No Food’ yellow badge and black tractor, on social media just a few weeks ago.
What I saw next or rather what I couldn’t see concerned me. That was the absence of any detail about who was behind this Twitter account that was quickly gaining followers, and most importantly who and what the people behind it are all about.
For anyone who did a basic search on Google around that time, it would have been quickly obvious that no organisation in the U.K. with that name exists. But that there has been a very similar campaign built around No Farms No Food No Future in the USA since at least 2018.
It wasn’t long before a scattering of the people who represent not only farmers, but also different areas of the massive range of issues that are tied up in U.K. agriculture’s problems, began to openly question the populist nature of the account and what were its real intentions.
Regrettably, however well intended, populism can create a lot of buy in from vulnerable people very quickly. But then has a habit of hurting those same people very badly just as soon as it’s clear the hollow words don’t actually work.
It wasn’t long before the ‘founder’ of No Farmers No Food finally outed himself. For those watching the political terrain and current affairs with an eye on social media, it wasn’t any great surprise to see that James Melville was that name.
I only know of James because his posts are almost continuously hitting my timeline. I may have even briefly followed him when he first appeared there some months after the first lockdown in 2020. When dissent against lockdowns, social distancing and all the madness suddenly became popular to talk and publish about ‘out loud’.
To be very fair, James is clearly a very talented marketing specialist. He knows how to rack up followers, likes and a lot of popularity online.
But follows, likes and hundreds of thousands of people nodding their heads in agreement as they sit down to have a poo, a successful political campaign with real tangible, life-changing outcomes does not alone make!
Everyone is capable of change and as George Bernard Shaw once said, ‘Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.’
So, the growing promises and popularity of the No Farmers No Food ‘campaign’ certainly hadn’t been a subject I’ve wanted to tackle directly by name, before there was any documented outline of what they intend to do and what really underpins their cause.
Last night, No Farmers No Food released a document that not only outlined what they see themselves about and what they see their value as being. It also leaned heavily on the words and feeling of farmers of different kinds who are desperately looking for change across the U.K. (A copy of the NFNF Press Release from 19 February 2024 can be found at the bottom)
There’s nothing wrong with anything that has been said. Other than the fact that Farmers and those that support them are even having to say it.
However, just because there is strength of feeling and so many within the industry and within the communities that surround it who are looking for solutions and someone who is going to instigate change, it doesn’t mean that the first few people with a visible loud haler and some words that everyone thinking about these issues can relate to, will be any different to anything or anyone who has come before.
This is where the real danger of what looks and sounds like something new and different presents. I’m afraid to say that I have not read anything in the release that I haven’t seen attempted or even being worked on by existing organisations, right now, or even before.
Farmers don’t need another group or organisation, that has a louder voice and gets more follows, but doesn’t get anything done. Even though good marketing plans and clever words will make it look like they have or that they can.
Regrettably, clever words, clever marketing and clever narratives are everything that’s already wrong with how the establishment, the respective UK governments and the politicians within them operate.
No organisation or groups of organisations are going to win friends by putting out adverts about the margins that farmers receive that might mention profit, but leave the scanning reader with the impression that after selling a kilogram of apples to a supermarket, the grower actually only receives 3p, when the pack price on the shelf is over £2.
This kind of approach is no different to scoring an own-goal. Not because the detail is technically wrong. But because mirroring the actions of those who are already blind will achieve absolutely nothing, whilst it also shows the same kind of sleight of hand or manipulation used by politicians that many members of the public are now desperate to move away from.
Strong, effective marketing from people with the skills and ability like James, have massive power to help and to create the change that is now necessary, IF Farming across the UK is to be saved from a destructive fate that many suspect, but very few really see. However, marketing is only a small part of that formula, because there’s a lot more than simple but effective messaging that needs to be achieved.
What the people heading popular campaigns say and what they represent isn’t the pathway to change itself. Even if they appear to be able to open lots of doors.
Yes, It’s nice to know that there are all sorts of people from all backgrounds and industries who are able to hear stories and compelling lines that they can all identify with when they are unhappy about a world that is giving everyone plenty to be unhappy about.
But where’s the purpose?
Where are the solutions that actually work?
Where is the real recognition that the problems aren’t about the subjects themselves, but rather how politics, the political system and the establishment itself works?
The only way to win against politicians who are incompetent, self-interested and only listening to advisers and so-called experts (with their own agendas), because when it comes to their real responsibilities they are massively out of their depth, is to play the political game even better than they and the people who support them can.
That doesn’t begin with any kind of strategy that relies on the politicians, their advisors or the establishment being the ones who are going to change.
Whilst it continues to be in some kind of ascendency, No Farmers No Food could very quickly win what appear to be concessions from the Sunak government and from whatever will follow. But the realities that underpin that and the direction that this entire political class are committed to taking UK Food Production will soon again begin to show – after Farmers and everyone who supports them will have been misled again into wasting what is now becoming invaluable time.
The reason that the many organisations that include big names such as the NFU and Food, Farming and Countryside Commission – who are covering so much of the ground that the wish list published yesterday mentioned already, aren’t achieving the results we all know they should be, is they are either too big, too London-centric, or like so many of us still believe that there is some kind of gentlemanly set of rules at work within the establishment that guarantee that as long as you do things the right way, the right things will end up being done in return for you.
Sadly, those days are long gone.
The power that farmers have to change much more than the destiny of farming itself, isn’t something that anyone can waste time waiting for permission to use.
Everyone is looking for solutions and answers from people who really don’t care about UK Farming.
People who are certain that they are right and farmers are wrong, because they genuinely believe that food will never be a problem, as it will always be available from elsewhere.
Please don’t continue to make the same mistakes. Boxing clever is the only way UK Farming can now succeed.
Adam Tugwell 
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