Foot and Mouth Research

Additional Information on options, decision making and effects, post outbreak.

Here we present a loose collection of informative material, mainly from the web, not originating in the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute.

** Its presence here does not imply our endorsement, it has been selected only for its believed relevance. **

Survey of Victim Farmers - Farmers Weekly April 25th

This information provides a first glimpse at the scale of the consequences for farming alone. Though not a scientific survey, it is indicative.

In the April Farmers Weekly survey, 6% claimed that they plan to give up farming altogether. Just less than 10% said their business would never recover and 17% said it would take more than ten years to get back to normality. Only one third believed they would recover within five years. According to the Farmers Weekly report, many respondents said farming would concentrate more on conservation. The article quotes Mark Avery, the RSPB director of Conservation as saying "Livestock will always be an important part of upland farming, but this is an opportunity to do things better. The Government should be thinking quite ambitiously about different forms of farm support."

It is quite likely that conservation will play a larger role in farm support, but as we show in this website, that does not simply translate into lower stocking densities. For individual farmers, the long haul back into full turnover may benefit from an increase in emphasis on environmental goals, especially if this is supported by the Government. On the regional and national scale, recovering from the foot and mouth trauma gives us a chance to rebuild a more stable and effective system of support for agriculture that delivers a broader range of benefits to farmers and to society as a whole.

Regional Aid Proposals and their possible effects

Various groups and agencies can be brought together to maximise the support given to rural businesses as they strive to overcome the financial blow of FMD. In Dumfries and Galloway, for example, the local council, Scottish Enterprise, the NFU of Scotland, the local tourist board, small business federation and local chamber of commerce have combined in making a bid for special regional aid. This has involved the collating and interpretation of research into the effect of FMD on jobs, tourism and, generally, rural business income. The Dumfries and Galloway Recovery Plan has a website where they publish their development plan proposal. The plan includes work towards a medium to long term restructuring of land-based business, quoted below.

"There is a need in the current crisis to assist farmers to obtain specialist assistance to help them consider their long term futures. It is proposed that Farm business audits should be made freely available to farm businesses, followed if they wish with a detailed plan which might cover options ranging from continuing as before; continuing but with farming diversification; diversifying into other activities; or disposal of the business."

"The Agri-Environment (Rural Stewardship) Scheme is a valuable feature of the existing Rural Development Plan for Scotland. It can have an important role in maintaining employment and incomes in agriculture through encouraging environmentally-friendly farming practices. We are seeking an enhancement of the scheme to address the particular needs of Dumfries and Galloway agriculture post FMD."

..."We also recognise, however, that recent events have brought into sharp focus the need to develop a sustainable long-term future for agriculture in Dumfries and Galloway. This will involve re-shaping the existing structures of the industry and exploring new directions and opportunities. In this sense, the proposal is that SERAD are asked to re-visit aspects of the Lowland Scotland Rural Development Plan and place Dumfries and Galloway at the centre of a pilot for aspects of the Rural Development Regulation (RDR) not yet taken up by the Scottish Executive. The EU's RDR contains, within its scope, a wide variety of measures which could be adopted as part of the strategy to address post foot and mouth issues, this having the added benefit of setting these measures within the context of a long term strategic framework. These actions could also attract co-financing through the Local Enterprise Company and local authorities."

Review of the Lowland Scotland Rural Development Plan
The Rural Development Plan is a key mechanism for achieving the successful delivery of rural development in Scotland. The existing Plan has, however, a relatively narrow focus and we believe there is now a need to review and extend the Scottish Scheme to provide a wider range of rural development measures both on and off farms to offer sustainable support and diversification opportunities to farming, land-based industry, rural tourism and craft activities and village and market town regeneration.
The review should allow the proposed Farm Business Development Scheme (yet to be launched) to be expanded to include investment in agricultural holdings as well as diversification (as in the Agricultural Business Development Plan operating in the Highlands).
As a first step we would propose the introduction of a Rural Enterprise Scheme to be piloted in Dumfries and Galloway. This could possibly be delivered through an increase in funding for the Processing and Marketing Scheme proposed for Lowland Scotland.

Similarly, Cumbria County Council have set up a task force (web information here), and they too are concentrating on obtaining special status funding for their rural business recovery plan.

Land Use Options - What are the Factors?

The options open to any individual agriculturalist are limited by environmental factors concerning the type of land and microclimate experienced, financial factors such as the market for products and support regime and the availability of equipment, knowledge and materials. From these, we need to generalise, to aggregate across farms to produce generalised constraint boundaries that can define the scope of predicted changes in farming practice.

Background reading - European agriculture subsidies in a world context: read what "The Economist" says (here)and more background on farm finance from ITN. (here )

Assessing the financial costs of FMD - comparing different countries

The Economist newspaper has published a very clear introductory account of the variation in responses to FMD outbreaks around the world and their resultingly different financial costs ( ).

Economic analysis of the effects of FMD

There have been a number of different national scale studies of the financial effect of foot and mouth, (e.g. see this Financial Times report and the CEBR press release ). Macaulay Land Use Research Institute has recently provided an economy-wide analysis of the BSE crisis using a computable General Equilibrium model of the UK economy () and is now working to adapt it into a regional model for the foot and mouth crisis.

Is Tourism the Cinderella victim?

The plight of the tourist industry is potentially one of the greatest financial effects of the foot and mouth outbreak. The Economist newspaper reports here a view that tourism is not given the attention it deserves by Government and its agencies. The Scottish Executive have committed further funding for tourism related business support (see their press release ). Tourism is supported by a number of Government and locally sponsored agencies, in Scotland the national tourism agency "Visit Scotland" coordinates a number of regional tourist boards, which work with local business, the local authorities and enterprise companies to promote tourism in their region. As is illustrated above, Government and other agencies are grouping together to build recovery plans for the industry and it may be that research and information services will help with this.

Groundwater vulnerability

Two issues arise post FMD regarding ground water and diffuse pollution: firstly there is the obvious problem of managing the large quantities of pollutants that may leak out from the massive carcass burial sites and secondly there are the opportunities on restocking, to improve certain aspects of farm activity to minimise diffuse pollution in the future.

In choosing the carcass disposal sites in Scotland, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency have used maps of soil leaching risk, produced here in the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute. (see the groundwater page).