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Say "No!" To Headage Payments

Dumfries and Galloway Standard May 2008

I don’t believe it!  It has recently been revealed that there has been a European commissioned report produced that recommends a partial return to the old headage support system that we rejected here in the UK in 2005.  What a tragedy for common sense that would be.

Now that most farmers have taken their first steps towards adjusting their stocking levels to the number of sheep that they think they can farm most profitably, being offered back the old crutch of a subsidy that is linked to the number of ewes that you keep would be a proposition we would all be best to refuse.

The report, which was produced by Ernst and Young in tandem with a French organisation called the Institute de L’evevage, recommends that we adopt a system that looks to be suspiciously like a worked-up version of the French system that they have at moment.  In France payments are still partial coupled to the number of sheep that a farmer keeps.  It is hardly surprising that the report has been skewed in this direction as the French organisation is one that is heavily focused on animal breeding and an organisation like them would never allow a report to be produced that would suggest that the French way was anything other than the right way.  As for Ernst and Young, I suspect that breeding is something they think you must have and not something that you do!

Not unsurprisingly, many of the recognised bodies that represent sheep farmers in the UK are hailing the contents of the report as being a panacea to fix all of the ills of the sheep industry.  It has to be said that the ones that are clapping and cheering the most have a vested interest in ensuring that sheep numbers are kept high for, what might be seen as, dubious reasons – declining levies and sliding memberships could be part of their concern.  However, they have very short memories.  The champagne corks still haven’t hit the ground since they were joining in the celebrations to welcome in this new age when headage payments were swept away and we could be free to farm in a way that would be sustainable and responsive to market conditions. 

The very fact that the national flock is shrinking is proof that sheep farmers had been keeping more sheep than they could farm efficiently, having been seduced by the prospect of receiving large headage payments.  Figures published by DEFRA show that the UK national flock fell from about 17 million ewes in 2005 to 16 million ewes in 2007.  The figures for Scotland show the same decline, down 137 thousand ewes last year to just below 7 .5 Million.

Now that we have tasted the freedom that the decoupled Single Farm Payment has afforded us there is a realisation amongst sheep farmers that the group of people that benefited least of all from headage payments were sheep farmers themselves. 

Because most of us were carrying more stock than our farms could sustain comfortably the use of drugs, feed and fertilisers on our farms were all kept artificially high. This benefited the vets, the drug companies, the feed merchants and the fertiliser manufacturers.  Then when it came time to market our produce the high volumes of lambs produced meant that a low market price was almost inevitable.  This benefited the abattoirs, the supermarkets and the consumers.  Nowhere in this chain of events was there any benefit for the farmer.  

Conversely, this spring, the effect of a little scarcity in the market for lamb has seen farmers being rewarded with better prices for their produce.  That’s what scarcity does and boy does it feel good.  Just give us a fair price - has been the constant chorus from farmers for years.  Now that we are nearer to getting this fair price we should not be conned into getting back onto the tread mill that we were locked into previously.  I would suggest that every time you hear some of our industry leaders talking about re-introducing headage linked subsidies for sheep we should all think very carefully about who stands to benefit the most from their suggestion.  I don’t think it will be sheep farmers!