Terry Abbott took over this year as North West regional director of the NFU. Here he looks forward to his first full year in charge, and wonders what the next 12 months holds in store for the area's agriculture industry.

Ask most people outside the farming and rural community what they know of The Curry Report' and you're likely to get a range of interesting responses. I wonder how many of those responses would relate to a particular form of ethnic cuisine many of us enjoy on a Saturday night, rather than The Policy Commission on the Future of Farming and Food?'

This particular Policy Commission was set up by the Prime Minister in August 2001 (in the aftermath of Foot-and-mouth disease) and was chaired by Sir Donald Curry. Its role was to advise government on how to create a sustainable, competitive and diverse farming and food sector, able to contribute to a thriving and sustainable rural economy, and advance environmental, health and animal welfare goals.

It was some shopping list and to be fair to Sir Don and his team, the report was compiled and presented to government about six months later, in February 2002. Now, some ten months hence, and after a series of consultation events around the UK, government has put forward its own response entitled The Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food - Facing the Future'.

So what happens now? Well the cynics among you may well be thinking that this is yet another government report that arrives in a blaze of glory and ends up as something of a damp squib! But I think this time around there is a difference, there is a discernible mood around the industry that change has to happen in order to ensure the long term survival of UK agriculture. And, if positive and sustainable change can be effected, then there are many economic, environmental and social benefits that will accrue to the wider rural community and to the landscape that is unique to Cumbria.

That landscape, so beloved by those fortunate enough to live in the county and by its many millions of visitors, has been shaped and cared for by generations of Cumbrian farmers and their families. But all too often their work has been done without proper reward or recognition. At a fringe meeting at this year's Labour Party conference, Baroness Young, chief executive of the Environment Agency said: "Farmers care for 75 per cent of our countryside and we expect them to do it for nothing. That cannot be right." And so the strategy seeks to address this issue with the introduction of what has become known as the broad and shallow' entry-level agri-environment scheme. The intention is to pay farmers to farm in a more sustainable way and, if this approach is successful in the four pilot areas around the UK, the scheme will be rolled out nationally in 2005.

But the strategy is so much more than the environment, important though that is. First and foremost it has to be about people and enabling those people to deliver a sustainable industry

which, by implication, has to be a profitable industry. A profitable industry will see

farmers being able to invest further in their businesses, rural communities and their economies will be strengthened, and opportunities for young people to live and work on those farms and in those communities will be greatly enhanced.

Above all, farmers have to achieve a fair price from the market for the top quality goods they produce.

The creation of the Food Chain Centre and more recently the English Farming and Food Partnerships will be critical in turning around the lack of profitability in the farming industry. These two organisations have the potential to deliver answers that are so desperately needed. Crucially, they must resolve one key issue: how is it that with food prices in Europe no higher than in Britain (even including a VAT element) that their farmgate prices are higher than ours? In the last five years, while UK farm incomes have fallen by 42 per cent, in Germany they have risen by 34 per cent. Solve that and we can go a long way to putting the entire UK food industry on to a secure footing for the future.

A rose-tinted view of the future? Yes, I suppose it is, but it's also achievable and is within the grasp of the farming and rural communities throughout the county and beyond.

If the tragedy that was foot-and-mouth mouth disease taught us anything, it was the extent to which the whole rural

economy and its people are inter-dependent.

And when the challenges had to be faced, the Cumbrians showed a great capacity to work together, to look for solutions and to deliver action for the future.

January 3, 2003 12:00