The Oxford Farming Conference, which opens its doors this morning always has a theme and in recent years it has backed this up by publishing a scene-setting report.
This year is no different but the results of a thorough look at competitiveness are far from encouraging for British farmers.
It appears that they are not the world-beaters they imagine themselves to be but instead lag behind their counterparts in many other countries in Europe and around the world.
The headline figures in the report – The Best British Farmers, What Gives Them The Edge? – show that the efficiency of UK agriculture has only increased by 1.4% a year since 1960 and that even that modest performance has flatlined since the early 1990s.
Oxford Farming Conference chairman Richard Whitlock said: “The report correctly identifies that lifestyle farmers or some agricultural sectors are willing to accept a lower level of performance. However, not facing the reality of poor performance and assuming that someone else will provide a solution is foolhardy.”
Mr Whitlock, who has had a long career in the grain trade, is in no doubt that reliance on subsidy, although vital to many, comes second to the influence of the individual. “This is particularly so in today’s cost-cutting and free market society,” he added.
The 72-page report is a serious piece of work by any standards. Author and farm consultant Graham Redman, of The Andersons Centre, said: “Cost saving is a major opportunity for farming businesses either through reducing business expenditure or ensuring output matches resources more precisely. Saving costs is the right commercial thing to do when it saves more cost than the income it foregoes.
“Within the UK, the main reason the best farmers make more money than the worst is because they spend less per unit of output. Higher output accounts for only about 10 to 30% higher profits while lower costs contribute 65 to 90%.”
There is also a no-holds-barred message in the report about the effects of research cutbacks.
“Improving efficiency at industry level is directly related to expenditure in research and development. In the UK this has fallen by about 6% per year in real terms over the last 20 years and is budgeted to continue falling for the next decade. To raise the performance of UK farming, this decline has to stop,” Mr Redman said.
Furthermore much more of the research and development funding should be focused towards near-market study by taking strategic research and applying it to industry. Such an approach would also attract greater amounts of private funding.
Mr Redman added: “The UK and EU farming industries, compared with other countries, are also hampered by having technologies held back or withdrawn from use. Genetically modified plant seeds are the obvious example, with more recently the loss of plant protection products. The UK and EU is increasingly operating with fewer tools than non-EU counterparts, putting farming under sustained pressure from ideological and political preferences.”
These are strong words and may not be lost on the political speakers who will open the conference this morning. It will be interesting to see how the call for an increased research budget and unfettered access to new technologies sits with Defra Minister Liz Truss and Scottish Rural Affairs Cabinet Secretary Richard Lochhead.