NFU Refuses to Use £30m to Aid Farmers

Suspicions have been confirmed that the National Farmers' Union, rather than serving the interests of the farmers have other vested interests. Their major investments in Tesco, Barclays Bank and the American GM giant Monsanto are inevitably a major conflict of interest bordering on corruption. Tesco claims that its £1bn profit was not off the back of farmers. It was claimed that their success was due to cutting prices against competitors whilst maintaining margin! Dissatisfaction with the NFU has long been widespread among farmers, and the manner in which they have behaved over the FMD crisis has been scandalous. While Farmers for Action, the grassroots movement which has given farmers so much cause for hope, was negotiating for higher milk prices with company traders, NFU president Ben Gill was having lunch with Terry Leaky!

The National Farmers' Union is refusing to offer financial support to its members despite amassing stock market investments worth more than £30 million. Among the union's investments are holdings in firms experimenting with genetically modified food, as well as supermarkets and banks that have been criticised for putting farmers out of business.

'Aid for farmers a matter for the government'

The NFU insisted that aid for farmers hit by foot-and-mouth was a matter for the Government. Michael Lambert, the union's treasurer, said: "We are a membership organisation and we use our money to lobby the Government to ensure farmers are properly compensated." If assets were used to assist farmers "we would have to raise our members' subscriptions or reduce the services to an unacceptable level", he said. John Edmonds, general secretary of the GMB trade union, said: "The hypocrisy of the NFU is staggering. At the same time as they attack the Government for not doing enough to bail out farmers they are refusing to spend a penny of their own money." Other unions regularly use financial reserves to assist members, not least during industrial action. Mr Edmonds said "the NFU is a union in name only".

NFU invests in GM food, banks and supermarkets

In October last year the NFU filed financial returns with the official Certification Office showing that it had quoted investments of £30,880,000. Among the union's investments are holdings worth hundreds of thousands of pounds in five drug and bioscience companies experimenting with genetically modified products, including the American GM giant Monsanto. The NFU has also bought a substantial number of shares in Tesco, the supermarket chain that it has accused of profiteering, and about £168,000 in Barclays Bank, which was accused of abandoning rural Britain last year when it shut down a large number of village branches. Mr Lambert defended the choice of stocks and shares. "It is a financial consideration: these investments are done purely for the return that we get," he said. MPs condemned the union for entering into investments that could compromise its ability to speak freely on behalf of its members. It is difficult to see how the NFU can speak freely about genetic modification while investing in companies like Monsanto."

A senior Labour MP with a partly rural constituency added: "Plenty of other organisations have found that they can invest wisely but invest ethically, so why can't the NFU? Why are they sitting on all this money at a time when the taxpayer is handing over so much compensation to farmers who have lost their livestock?" The NFU is in favour of controlled field trials on genetically modified crops, although the leadership acknowledges that its membership is deeply divided on the issue. Lawrence Wright, who has a 40-acre sheep farm near Ilfracombe, Devon, where he produces organic cheese, said: "It's not in my interests and I don't believe that it's in the interests of other small family farmers." He believes that the NFU should be investing in local abattoirs and small chains of butchers' and grocers' shops to help its members to sell their produce.

Source: The Times, 1 May 2001