Farming is full of paradoxes. Mention the rural economy and an image of impoverished land-workers springs to mind. Yet barely one in forty people in rural Britain works in agriculture, according to Census data.

Neither are countryside-dwellers necessarily poorer than their urban cousins. True, many farm labourers work for some of the lowest wages around, but the body that supposedly supports them, the Agricultural Wages Board (AWB), may, in fact, be doing more harm than good. The board is an anomaly. Wage councils went out of fashion at about the same time as big hair and shoulderpads. Other low-paid workers, such as waiters, have been left to fend for themselves: only the AWB has survived.

Its purpose is undermined by the existence of the National Minimum Wage. The minimum applies to rural workers, but the AWB likes to add on a bit extra, to prove that it still has a role.

However, there is no clear reason why migrant workers should, by government order, be paid more for picking mushrooms in a Norfolk field than for serving them in the pub next door.

Séan Rickard, an academic adviser to the Government on rural matters and former chief economist at the National Farmers’ Union, says that the board has become “farcical”.

Its stringent requirements force farmers to pay 50 per cent extra for workers’ overtime. Farmers get around this by hiring more workers and barring them from putting in more than 35 hours a week, he said.

This is not in the best interests of those who travel from, say, Poland to pick strawberries for a few intense weeks a year. The board’s rules also bar “piece rates”, or performance-related pay, making it difficult to encourage hard work.

It is not obvious that the T&G is doing its members any favours.

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