Ferguson's negative image of the industry has prevailed

​Harry Ferguson was the greatest engineer from Northern Ireland.
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​In one of his many quotations he said his development of the tractor was based around the need to escape the drudgery of farming. He saw mechanisation was the escape route from hard and often unrewarding farm work. He was right and as the saying goes, the rest is history.

Ferguson would be amazed to see the highly automated tractor cabs of today, but arrogant enough to see these as a natural extension of his belief in the need to escape the drudgery of farming.Globally it seems that negative image of the industry has prevailed.According to a report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which represents the world's developed economies, there is a global labour and skills crisis in agriculture.

In a blunt report it suggests this reflects a lack of interest in farming as a career choice. It says this is compounded by the 'relatively small, and declining' contribution of agriculture to national economies and a negative public perception of the industry. The OECD says it is seen as a sector with low wages and limited career prospects. Policies it says that could tackle these problems include education and training, social protection policies and immigration.It says closer public and private collaboration could help improve working conditions and the training of young entrants. It also says greater attention needs to be given to improving the image of agriculture as a career choice, improving the alignment of skills to the needs of the sector and strengthening national advisory services.

Harry Ferguson saw mechanisation as the escape route from hard and often unrewarding farm work.Harry Ferguson saw mechanisation as the escape route from hard and often unrewarding farm work.
Harry Ferguson saw mechanisation as the escape route from hard and often unrewarding farm work.

This is a familiar problem for the UK, since Brexit closed off easy access to EU migrant labour. With UK unemployment relatively low this has become a major issue for food processors as well as farmers, with both well aware that while migrant labour was happy to work in the industry local people are not, because of the negatives highlighted in the OECD report. That document confirms that the skills and labour shortage the UK is experiencing are not entirely down to Brexit, but that sudden loss of easy access to open labour markets in Europe was yet another political decision never thought through before being implemented.It was no surprise that leading advocates of Brexit were part of a cross party political meeting to debate why it has failed to deliver. If there is an answer its roots lie in the wild claims of leave supporters about the sunny uplands that lay ahead outside the EU. If those ever existed they were crushed by how Covid and Ukraine changed the world and made big power and trade blocs more vital.

The failure of Brexit is down to the same politicians now asking why their dream went sour. They failed to seize the opportunities it offered to be radical and global. We are still following the same agricultural policies as the EU, but making them even greener with less funding; politicians have shown no interest in home-produced food or being tough on imports. We are out of the EU, but still in it. This makes membership of the European Economic Area and single market easy, but Conservative politicians still run scared of the supposed might of its Brexit wing, despite that wing's inability to show benefits from Brexit.The Northern Ireland protocol is a classic example of the famous Fawlty Towers line don't mention the war. I was however right when a few weeks ago, in this column, I said the 'mood music' in Brussels and London was moving towards a deal. Whether this can resolve the differences around the protocol is questionable, but the UK government will see it as the best deal available and make clear it believes the issues have been resolved. It will then be up to local political parties to decide whether there is any merit in pushing a newly reluctant Brussels and London for more. Brussels officials are still in good cop/bad cop role.Some are stressing it was the UK's Brexit negotiating strategy of putting sovereignty ahead of market access that created the problem.Others are however stressing the need to avoid a trade war with the UK. They say trade in agricultural products and food from the EU to the UK is far ahead of trade in the opposite direction, to the tune of around 27 billion euro in the first ten months of 2022, bringing huge benefits to European farmers.