AEA submission to the next government

Hi, I’m Roger Lane-Nott and I’m the Director General and Chief Executive of the Agricultural Engineers Association. In the next few minutes, I’m going to tell you – give you a brief flavour anyway of the submission that the Agricultural Engineers Association has put to the next government.
Now this submission is 8, 9, 10 pages long and it will be available to you on our blog, if you want to read it for non members and for members, you will be sent a specific copy. But what I would like to do is just to give you an instant flavour of what some of the issues that we’re going to do. And one of the key things here is, we haven’t just made a wish list or a manifesto, or you know, we want this and stamp the table. What we’ve actually done, is we’ve said what we the industry are going to do on each particular topic and then we’ve then said what we’d like to see the government do to complement our efforts.
So the first item is research and development. Research and development in this area – well in UK as a whole, but certainly in agricultural engineering is pretty poor really. And we’re struggling to actually get that right amount of research and development to provide innovation, new products for manufacturing. And particularly in the agricultural sector, we’ve seen a real denudation of agricultural engineering researchers over the last ten or 15 years.
We’ve seen also that the research councils have not really put much effort into agriculture, it’s been off the radar, but I’m pleased to say that that’s changing. And we are now fully engaged with the Technology Strategy Board and the Research Councils and we’ve created the Land Equipment Research Partnership in an attempt to try and bring researchers together and to try and find funding to support a research into agriculture. It’s been particularly helpful as well because in Europe there is a lot of money available within the European framework for research. It’s more difficult to put into submissions and get it. But if you’re interested in this, please let us know.
Skills, is the next one. We need to encourage young people both into farm and outdoor power machinery. I would argue into farming as well, but certainly into our particular manufacturing area. And in order to do that, we need several things.
First of all, we need the schools to provide properly educated people. I am not knocking them here. What I am trying to say is that, what employers need is young people who can have a modicum of reasonableness on English, on Maths, on Science subjects. So that they can then move on into the next stage of their development. There are a lot of opportunities for engineers, for technicians in agricultural engineering across the board in many variety types of jobs. Whether you’re going to maintain a tractor or a combine or whether you’re going to work in plant biology. It’s all there. And of course, in many cases, if you look at the requirements now in doing that thing, the technicians that have to be really well trained and working with the skills councils and [Lantron 0:3:23] and other bodies, we’re doing our best to create a proper career environment that will give a structure so there is a career path for agricultural engineers and technicians. And they can see that ladder in front of them that they can climb up. It’s a big task, but we must continue with it.
Open markets and competitiveness. Well an interesting one – we have a Single European Market. That Single European Market runs reasonably well, but in doing that we have begun to see a certain amount of protectionism coming in from certain EU member states. It’s difficult to pin down, but it is there. And we are absolutely clear that the UK government really must persuade the whole of Europe to continue to push and insist on open markets. It’s fundamental as an island nation that we can create, we can manufacture and we can export.
Standards – whether it’s International Standards, European Standards, or British standards. There needs to be some form of alignment going on here. International standards, by nature, they cover the world, inevitably go to the lowest common denominator and that’s not always what we want. European Standards tend to go higher and they may not be in line with American ones. And British Standards are somewhere in the middle. Although if you’re trying to produce something and you want to design it, where you start is really a bit of a puzzle. So we’ve asked specifically that there is some consolidation across International, European and British Standards – that we make it an easier process to go through. It doesn’t mean to say we want to reduce the standards, far from it. If anything we want to increase them. But those standards must be worked upon by industry people who know what they’re talking about in trying to produce standards that really matter.
Export support. We need to change the emphasis of UK Trade and Investment. There’s far too much emphasis on investment and not enough on export. I’d like to see a national export agency be created, which concentrates on what is a key element for this country in creating wealth. You don’t create wealth certainly by being in the service industry. You might well give jobs, but you don’t create wealth, you have to manufacture. And that’s an issue in this country that is in sad decline. And it bodes badly for our future if we don’t do that.
So we need a proper emphasis in government to push and help all companies but particularly small and medium sized enterprises, to help them export, to assist them, to help fund them when they go to overseas shows. And make a big effort to try and get more British companies exporting. Too often I hear the story from an SME saying, “Oh it’s all too difficult. It’s too much paper, too much bureaucracy, I shan’t bother.” We’ve got to change that, we really must.
Tractor and trailer testing. We know that farmers want more speed and weight from their tractors. On the roads they’re there and we see them every day. But they want to carry greater loads; they want to do one journey instead of three. But that means that the trailers have to have proper brakes on them. And we’re in close consultation with the National Farmers Union, with the Department of Transport in an attempt to find a solution where we can have, not just the trailer being tested, not the tractor being tested, but the combination of the tractor and the trailer. If you want to carry large weights, it’s important that the trailer takes some of the braking, not just the tractor.
Pesticides. Pesticides is a very emotional issue. We know very well that European Union, the way they are would like – because they support the consumer, would like to remove all pesticides. That’s an unrealistic ambition on their part. The reality of life is, as much as we like organic food and we grow a certain amount of it, that going totally organic will not feed the world, let alone the UK. So there has to be a balance here. And the proper use of pesticides and allowing certain pesticides around is very important for example. And we’ve seen the work that we’ve done with the voluntary initiative and we at the AEA run the National Sprayer Testing Scheme and we believe that should continue. Because it’s made huge progress, not only in the quality of spray and maintenance, but the leaks from sprayers and the run-offs into water courses.
Next is the Machinery Directive. This Machinery Directive was finally signed off, the new version of it, just before the New Year. And it’s a huge document. It’s taken four or five years to get to its current form – and the previous one was 25 years ago. It won’t surprise you to know that there are 400 pages of guidance on how you should use it and that’s a volume in itself. But it’s going to have a big effect because it’s going to effect, not every standard but a great proportion of standards, particularly in our field. And so, if you need help with the Machinery Directive and how you apply the New Machinery Directive to what you’re doing, then please do get in touch.
The age old problem of ATVs. They’re not very popular amongst the public, but ATVs – that’s All Terrain Vehicles, are very important for hill farmers who have take feed to sheep in difficult terrain. And they’re used significantly within the farming community. There’s a problem. Are they a tractor or are they a motorcycle? What tariff should they be in and so forth? So we have an ATV group and we work with the European Group and we have specific proposals for the government that should improve both their registration and also the tariffs that they pay.
And finally, in our submission to the next government, we’ve inevitably tried to say, we need better regulation, not more regulation. And whichever government gets into power, it’s very important that we continue to look at ensuring that the regulation that we have is better. Too many companies, particularly the small ones are buried under an avalanche of bureaucracy. And all that does is stop them spending the time to export and produce more and we must in some way try and ensure that we do better with that.
Now, if you have any views on any of these, please let us know. For members of AEA this submission will be sent to you shortly. It is about to go to ministers and politicians and influential bodies throughout the United Kingdom and Europe and if you are a non-member, you will find it on our blog very shortly.
If you need further information or you want to contact us on any of those subjects, please don’t hesitate – www.aea.uk.com.