Generous Andy "gives" farmers £65M to help with the drought

 Showman Barnum's latest PR stunt is to announce £65M help for drought struck farmers.

Dig a little deeper into the headline and it's not really £65M.  £50M is for sustainable farming incentive (SFI) - ie helping nature.  If you have watched the latest Clarkson's farm series  - Clarkson thought he could get get the grants for doing nature things eg damming rivers etc - the reality is there's lots of paperwork involved and is it really worth the effort?  The farmer can earn more working in McDonalds.

The remaining £15M of Barnum's £65M  is for help to build farm reservoirs - probably useful if drought is to become the new norm although last year lots of crops were lost to too much rain....

There are 209,000 farms in the UK.  If each far gets an equal share of this £15M that's £71 for each farm...I suspect that's hardly going to make a difference to drought struck farms.

Wheat yields are down 14%. Oat yields are down 9%. In a typical year, the UK produces 12-15 Million tonnes of wheat. The typical selling price per tonne is £170-£210. So the UK will produce roughly 1.6 Million less tonnes so £268M less wheat.  If we assume all of the 209,000 farms grow wheat (which is not true) then each far is £1,367 worse off due to the drought - the £71 is not going to make a difference.  I suspect there's paperwork involved with this £71 grant to build a farm reservoir. 

So to build a typical 10million gallon farm reservoir costs between £150k and £300k to build.  The upfront costs for planning approval fees and professional fees for a farm reservoir is £45k.  So let's assume this £15M is solely used for planning bureaucracy then that means he's helping just 333 farms - sod the other 208,667 farms....The farm still needs to find another £150k+ to build the reservoir...and don't forget the farm reservoir is an asset so will be subject to inheritance tax.



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