No Farmers No Food may be a wasted opportunity for UK Farming in its current form. But personal attacks on those leading it are no better than any one of us shooting at our own hand

A few days ago, I wrote and published a blog where I outlined why No Farmers No Food (NFNF) campaign will achieve nothing, whilst it could also end up doing UK Farming and Food Production considerable harm.

To do so meant mentioning the founder, James Melville. I don’t know James personally, but because of my ongoing interest in politics and the true depth of the problems that the U.K. is facing, I have been aware of him since he first appeared as a growing voice in what I’ll call the anti-lockdown ‘movement’ that appeared in the summer of 2020 following the first lockdowns.

Whilst I have discussed my reasoning that NFNF will not be able to achieve anything more than the range of existing organisations that are already working on the issues UK farming faces or have tried to do so before, it is also important to recognise what this new campaign is doing differently: NFNF has reached a much wider audience and has captured the imagination of people in ways that many of the existing lobbyist organisations supporting UK Farming have not done, so far.

The impact of NFNF is down to marketing and online campaigning. Or rather, making the best of the communication mediums that are currently available to anyone or any organisation that wants to change anything in the public realm, and isn’t already in a position where they have a platform where they could have the same effect just by opening their mouths.

The people who could do that – who arguably should already be doing that on behalf of UK Agriculture, are the people who are already in power. The people who we have elected and the people with roles in the establishment, who aren’t getting the things that they should be right. Because they are putting what’s important to them or what’s important to the people who are important to them, first.

Having the exposure that James has generated repeatedly since he emerged online, or being one of those people with public responsibility who isn’t using it as they should be, all adds up to the same outcome, IF there is no understanding or appreciation of the cause of the problems beyond an obsession with their effects, along with an appreciation of how everything in government, politics and the establishment really works today. Which genuinely isn’t anything like what most of us expect – even some of those within it.

Appearing to have a platform, with growing support and ‘breakthrough’ messages that give the immediate belief that those behind it can achieve things, will bring many different people and interests out of the woodwork who want to use that exposure for themselves. Usually because they aren’t getting the level of success with their own approaches, that they can see that new platform has.

It’s this visually-derived focus that brings groups like Together, climate deniers, right-wingers, anti-Brexiteers, and all sorts of different people with badges those who disagree with their priorities have given them, who identify with the issues that UK Farmers face tom banners like NFNF.

They see a vehicle that could be the answer to whatever problem they see as the priority, believing that their ‘fix’ will be the one that fixes everything for everyone else too.

The biggest obstacle to a successful outcome or resolution to all the common issues that Farmers share, is what we are now seeing unfolding in the disagreements about NFNF.

Different groups and individuals are attacking each other or piling in on individuals who have said something they don’t like about their take on what NFNF are going to do, and using links, affiliations and everything but the issues around what will actually work, when the point is being missed that in its current form, with the current mentality and the current lack of genuine engagement of a kind that social media simply cannot give, there will be nothing meaningful that NFNF can achieve.

The truth is that there is a massive range of people with different skills, experiences and talents that need to be involved in any movement that is going to succeed in delivering change for UK Farmers and Food Producers, where so many have already failed or been bought off with meaningless compromises before.

The parallels between this new campaign and how entry to the current political system works are frightening. Success in one area of business, obtaining a platform or just getting yourself elected doesn’t equip anyone with the understanding that it takes to do anything and certainly not where the realms of public policy interconnect and interacting with a completely broken system are concerned.

We shouldn’t doubt the good intent behind NFNF. But it’s been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions and a large number of rightly angry, desperate and frustrated people are getting carried away by an idea that presents a good story, that in reality will end up a very long way from what it now seems.

We cannot have all the things that we want. That much is clear from the reality that we are all living through.

We need to focus upon the things that we genuinely need.

What we have the power to do is recognise the key things or rather the aims that we have in common. Such as saving U.K. Farming and making sure that everyone in the U.K. has everyday access to good, healthy, natural and farm-grown food.

It’s easy to dismiss workable solutions on the basis that they don’t appear to deliver the solutions that we want. But that’s really the most important point.

If we work together to deliver what’s right for everyone and not just what we want, what we want is likely to be delivered or will become a lot nearer by doing so.

We will then be winning multiple times over. Rather than fighting each other for no good purpose and not delivering anything to help anyone at all.

The real Barriers to Progress in UK Farming, Food Production & Security

The real problem and barrier to progress in achieving the meaningful change that UK farmers and food producers need, is agreeing on what change is needed and what that change will therefore be.

The number of people, business owners, organisations and lobbying organisations that have an interest in the future of farming and food production, simply because of the many areas that the food chain touches and relates to, is mind boggling.

Every one of them has a different take on what’s happening. What the real issues or causes and effects of the problems are. And therefore what the solution needs to achieve.

In many cases, that also means they will already have an idea of what the solution needs to be.

This is where everything hits the metaphorical brick wall. Because we all have a habit of getting emotionally tied into the dynamic of the experience we have vs the problem as we see it vs what we know the solution needs to be or look like for us.

Work together. Find all that we have in common. Then we will have common cause

It’s frustrating to watch the same old arguments unfold and play out between different interests that have so much more in common than what are probably just a few ideas that divide them.

Ideas that would probably be progressed anyway, by focusing on what aims we share in common, with the people that we might today be refusing to listen to. Because the few things we appear to disagree on appear to make everything else they have to say or can do to help us, wrong.

For instance, we all:

Need to eat (healthy food that will not harm us)
Need to drink (clean, healthy water)
Need food and water that is natural with a good nutritional base
Want eating healthy food to be ‘normal’ or easy
Want food to be readily accessible to us at a price that we can afford
Need Food Security
Need the UK Food supply to be sustainable
Need the planet to continue being able to support our lives
Want to be happy

And there will certainly be more.

However, the issues we see about issues like climate change (and whether it’s real), money, being vegetarian or vegan, rewilding, wild animals, animal welfare standards, who deserves to be guaranteed access to food, hedgerows, building on productive land, what a sustainable life really looks like and just about everything else that can be argued as being personal to us and therefore how we see ourselves, is a belief.

It isn’t what we have in common.

That’s why adopting a purist approach and saying anyone or all of these priorities we have MUST be the end result, in order for us to agree, is what stops us all from coming together to achieve something that could quickly become very good.

This post has been taken and adapted from the book Food From Farms Guaranteed, published on Amazon, 16/02/24.

The Key Stakeholders in UK Food Production are the Farmers and Consumers

We need to ask the questions: ‘What does it mean to be a stakeholder?’ and ‘Who are the real stakeholders?’

Because the interests of the people who are guiding, influencing and controlling the most visible forms of food standards that communicate what farmers do to those who consume the food produced, are not focused or aligned with the interests of the most important stakeholders who are located at each end.

The focus of power and influence in UK food production is instead directed to the many middle parts of what is in the main an otherwise unnecessary chain.

No value is added. But production prices are squeezed from every angle, whilst the price to the consumer is repeatedly being raised.

The role of commercial, profit and greed-led businesses in UK food production is bad enough. But any argument that statutory authorities have the right to dictate the direction of food production and also insert themselves into the food chain as a key stakeholder, is willfully and deliberately misplaced and, in all honesty, wrong.

Government and the public sector exists to serve the people. Not to make every decision that will dictate what any person or what any business can do.

This is where we are all getting our relationship with the establishment and every part of it wrong.

This post was taken and adapted from the book Food From Farms Guaranteed, published on Amazon, 16/02/24.

The Advocacy and Lobbyist Organisations involved in food policy today are all about the interests of those Organisations

Whilst I am hesitant to say anything that places advocacy and lobbyist organisations like the NFU and any of the representatives who speak for them in a bad light, because I don’t intend to, it has to be said that no matter what meetings they have, what promises they receive or whatever headlines they make, lobbyist organisations like them will not achieve the results that farmers need.

Because for them, the approach that would be needed and the perceived risk to the relationships that they have with politicians, government departments, NGOs, business and retailers, or many other organisations by doing what needs to be done, is perceived to be too high.

This isn’t a criticism. This is how established and well-known lobbying organisations work, right across every area of public policy.

They value the relationship that they have with the establishment more than they do the need to do whatever it will take to achieve meaningful solutions for the people and businesses that they represent.

That results in compromise, fudges and being grateful for nothing more than politicians, business and public sector leaders paying lip service to the idea that the change they offer is the same thing as a genuine outcome being achieved.

To be fair, one of the myths that too many of us have bought into is the idea that politicians and the establishment do actually know and understand what they are doing. That they have integrity with the responsibility they have to the electorate, and that they are therefore people we can trust.

Few have a real appreciation of the interconnectedness of every problem that exists within the realm of Public Policy, and I’m afraid that I speak from experience when I say that this very much includes the politicians who are supposedly in Westminster and within the devolved Administrations who are there to legislate on our behalf.

This post has been taken from Food From Farms Guaranteed, Published on Amazon 16/02/24.

To read in FULL online, please click the link immediately below:

FOOD FROM FARMS GUARANTEED | Full Text

Who controls Our Food controls Our Future (Full Text)

The need for a collaborative approach to the UK Farming and Food Security Problem

Why No Farmers No Food won’t help. But could certainly cause UK Farmers and Food Security a lot more harm instead

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.