Professional AdviceYou are here : In Your Area » Midlands » Regional News Archive » Common Agricultural Policy » Government
Rural watchdog’s call to fix market failures The Government will need to act to put right market failures – that's the message the national vice-president of the Country Land and Business Association (CLA) has delivered to landowners in Herefordshire.
The CLA's Herefordshire branch held its AGM at The Whittern Farms, near Kington to hear Henry Robinson explain the key concerns the rural watchdog will be flagging up with ministers in the new Government. The link, he says, is market failure, and he spoke about issues including broadband provision and the Common Agricultural Policy. "In some of those areas there has been a complete failure in the market – access to broadband, for example, is a vital tool for all modern businesses, not just those based in the towns and yet the market has singularly failed to meet the demand. This is one area where the Government will have to intervene to ensure that businesses based in our rural communities can continue to compete with their urban counterparts." But he warned that the biggest failure in the market was where the environmental goods provided by farmers and land managers were simply expected to materialise as a free add-on to farming. "The big challenge is to get people to understand that, if we want farmers to continue to deliver food - for which the market pays - and environmental goods - for which the market does not pay - then payment for the public goods has to come from the public purse – in this case via the Single Farm Payment. Farming must be efficient, competitive and viable in the long term because without a viable farming industry we'll get neither the food nor the environment we want," he said. Mr Robinson said that nowhere was this issue better demonstrated than in Herefordshire where livestock farmers were critical to the continued well being of the environment and landscape – and, therefore, to the associated tourist industries. "Yet the market in food goods alone cannot support the farmers and there is a real risk that if we lose the skills and the farmers from the landscape, we will lose the landscape itself," he said. |
Contact Henry Robinson
Have a problem - need advice? Midlands Office Knightley
Join the CLA today
The CLA Game Fair 2013
Partnership Opportunities Discover how a corporate partnership with the CLA could help your business. CLA Events in your area To receive our regular email newsletter containing advice and the latest news affecting the region - contact the office or send your email address and membership number to midlands@cla.org.uk |
RSS Feeds
Henry Robinson, Deputy President of the CLA and Chairman of the CLA’s Board, owns and manages a farm in Gloucestershire. His main crops are wheat and oilseed rape and he also lets out workshops and cottages.
- Policy Topics
- Policy Topics
- Site sections
- Specially for members
© 2013 Country Land and Business Association Limited (CLA). All rights reserved. No part of this website may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in any retrieval system of any nature without prior written permission of the copyright holder except as expressly permitted by law.
Disclaimer
No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action in reliance on or as a result of the material included in or omitted in this website can be or is accepted by the author(s), the CLA or its officers or trustees or employees or any other persons.
The Advisory Services are made available to members on the basis that members' rights to compensation and the liability (if any) of CLA and its officers and/or its staff advisers, are restricted in the following ways. In the event of any advice given by any CLA staff adviser being given negligently or otherwise being incorrect no liability whatsoever is accepted by the CLA or its officers or by its staff advisers concerned
(a) towards any person who is not the current CLA member to whom the advice was directly given,
(b) to any person in the respect of consequential loss or loss of profits, or
(c) to any person for any sum exceeding £50,000 in respect of any one enquiry (whether made or responded to orally or in writing and whether dealt with at one time or over a period of time).
Any person making use of the Advisory Services accepts such restrictions. Members should refer to appropriate professional advisers in private practice before taking any particular course of action potentially or actually involving any substantial amounts of money.
Please note that whilst the advisers are able to advise on a wide range of subjects relating to land ownership, they cannot act in place of a member's own solicitor, accountant, surveyor and tax specialist by, for example, drafting documents or corresponding on their behalf and may be precluded, by the rules of their own professions, from advising one CLA member against another CLA member in the case of conflict.
Solicitors Indemnity Fund . Solicitors in the CLA Legal Team are not covered by the Solicitors Indemnity Fund in relation to professional negligence in relation to any advice given by them.
Please note that from time to time telephone calls maybe recorded for training purposes.