By unlocking the export potential China offers the pig industry, not to mention the red meat sector as a whole, we could gain entry into a marketplace which comprises a fifth of the world’s population.Quotes of the decade on the key issues affecting farmers
Foot-and-mouth 2001
“We seem destined to repeat the mistakes of history.”
Iain Anderson in the foreword to his 2001 FMD Lessons Learned report, July 2002
“This is all-out war. This is nothing more than a sinister way of ethnically cleansing the British countryside.”
Farmers for Action leader, David Handley, on the decision to cull all livestock within 3km of an FMD outbreak, March 16, 2001
Bovine TB
“I feel there is a constant dark cloud of uncertainty over me, causing stress, anxiety and fear. I feel weary, mentally and physically, which results in pain in my body.”
Anonymous farmer in Farm Crisis Network report ‘Stress and Loss’, July 2009
“I have decided that while such a cull might work, it might also not work. It could end up making the disease worse… I do not think it would be right to take this risk.”
Defra Secretary Hilary Benn announcing he had decided against a badger cull, July 2008
SPS fiasco
“Full Payments on Track for Farmers.”
They weren’t. A comically over-optimistic headline in Defra’s Farming Link magazine ahead of the SPS fiasco, February 2006
“For some reason, having started to make payments the whole system gummed up. I am sorry that is not a technical IT word.”
Defra Permanent Secretary, Dame Helen Ghosh, explains what went wrong to the EFRA committee, May 2006
“Oversight of the Single Payment Scheme is a singular example of comprehensively poor administration on a grand scale.”
Public Accounts Committee chairman, Edward Leigh, December 2009
Floods
“Hello - my name’s Jeff Rooker. I am the man from Defra. I am here to help. I am here to learn.”
Food and Farming Minister, Jeff Rooker, greeting farmers near Tewkesbury hit by the floods, August 2007
“We have got 140 acres of hay under water. It is ruined. We usually get 1,000 big bales of hay from it, but all we have got left is 12 bales from last year.”
Farmer Gordon Halling tells the Minister just how bad it is
FMD 2007
“We thought it could be poisoning - I mean you never think it might be foot-and-mouth. But unfortunately that’s what it was. We were devastated.”
Surrey farmer Roger Pride on the moment the family discovered its cattle had FMD, December 2007
Bluetongue
“Extending the (bluetongue) Control Zone to the whole of the country would keep me in business. If it is notextended, we are all finished.”
Sussex sheep farmer Frank Langrish on the pain felt by those caught within the bluetongue zones, October 2007
Climate Change
“Efficiency improvements in the food and agriculture sector must be accompanied by a 30 per cent reduction in livestock in high-producing countries to meet climate change targets.”
A Government-backed report in the Lancet provokes a storm of controversy, November 2009
“Careless demands like this don’t just undermine farming, they erode public support for action on climate change.”
Shadow Defra Secretary, Nick Herbert, responds, November 2009
Food Security
“Our farmers and farmers around the world will have another two to three billion mouths to feed in two generations’ time. That’s why I want British agriculture to produce as much food as possible today as we protect the soil and water on which our ability to grow more food tomorrow depends.”
Defra Secretary, Hilary Benn, gets the message about food security, Labour Party Conference, September 2007
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