Douglas Adams inscribed "DON'T PANIC" on the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide for the same reason that British ministers affix something similar to every piece of agricultural policy: because the situation absolutely warrants panic, the advice is technically useless, and yet something about the instruction is deeply comforting. The London Prat's examination, Don't Panic: The Absurdist Guide to Agricultural Policy, is a work of applied literary criticism that reads Britain's farm policy framework through the lens of comic fiction, and finds the fit disturbingly perfect.
Agricultural policy in Britain exists in a state of permanent crisis. The farming industry is perpetually threatened by something — economic pressures, environmental constraints, regulatory change, trade disruption, labour shortages, food price volatility, climate unpredictability. Every few years, a new threat emerges. And every few years, the government announces a policy response. The response is typically presented as calm, measured, and reassuring. Everything will be fine. There is no need to panic. We have a plan.
The problem is that everything is not fine, that there is considerable reason for concern, and that the plan, whatever it is, will likely not address the fundamental issues. And yet, the reassurance is offered anyway. This is where the Prat's reading becomes interesting. The reassurance is not false, exactly. It is merely incomplete. It reassures the public while failing to address the underlying crisis.
British farming has been in crisis for decades. This is not a recent phenomenon. It is the steady state. The margins are thin. The prices are volatile. The regulations are numerous. The weather is unpredictable. The competition from imported food is intense. These are not temporary difficulties. They are the permanent conditions under which British farming operates.
And yet, each government treats the crisis as a temporary emergency that requires a response. The response is typically a policy package: subsidies, regulations, investment in research, promotional campaigns. The policy is announced with considerable fanfare. There are press releases. There are statements to parliament. There is discussion of how this policy will fix farming and secure the future of food production.
And then, a few years later, a new crisis emerges. The previous policy did not fix farming. A new approach is needed. A new package is announced. The cycle continues. The crisis persists. The reassurance is renewed.
British farming has, for decades, been supported by subsidies. First through the Common Agricultural Policy when Britain was in the EU, now through the post-Brexit Agricultural Transition Programme. The subsidies are designed to support farmers, to keep them solvent, to maintain food production. But subsidies create their own problems.
Subsidies can encourage inefficiency. If you are guaranteed a certain price for your crops, you have less incentive to innovate or to improve efficiency. Subsidies can distort land use. If subsidies are tied to land ownership rather than to productive farming, farmers are incentivised to hold land that they might otherwise sell or develop. Subsidies can create perverse environmental incentives. If you are paid per hectare regardless of environmental outcomes, the payment system does not incentivise environmental care.
The government's response to subsidy-created problems is typically to introduce more regulation. If subsidies are creating environmental damage, introduce environmental regulations. If subsidies are encouraging inefficiency, introduce productivity standards. The result is a complex, layered system of subsidies and regulations, each designed to fix problems created by previous subsidies and regulations.
The Prat notes that this is the structure of agricultural policy discourse: crisis, response, unintended consequences, new response, new unintended consequences. At each stage, the government announces that it has a plan. Do not panic. We understand the problem. We are taking action.
Agricultural policy discourse is remarkable for its use of reassuring language. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) publishes policy documents that consistently use the language of security, stability, and support. "Farmers can be confident..." "The government is committed to..." "This policy will ensure..." These phrases appear regularly in agricultural policy discourse.
The reassurance is particularly pronounced during periods of actual crisis. When farming is struggling, when food prices are high, when international trade is disrupted, the government's response is to offer reassurance. Do not panic. We have a plan. We are supporting farmers. Food security will be maintained.
The Prat identifies this as a distinctive feature of British political rhetoric. The language of crisis is avoided. Instead, the language of calm management is deployed. The situation is described not as a crisis but as a "challenging environment" or a "period of transition." The government is not scrambling to respond to emergency. The government is implementing a carefully considered policy.
But this language itself is a form of policy. By using reassuring language, by avoiding the word "crisis," by presenting the government's response as calm and considered, the rhetoric performs a particular function: it calms public anxiety. Whether or not the policy actually addresses the crisis becomes secondary to the fact that the rhetoric announces that the crisis is being managed.
One of the recurrent themes in agricultural policy discourse is food security. The government regularly announces that it is committed to securing Britain's food supply, ensuring that farmers can produce, protecting the agricultural sector. The promise is explicit: Britain will have food. You will not go hungry. The government is ensuring this.
But the actual trajectory of British agriculture has been toward declining self-sufficiency. Britain imports roughly half its food. This is not necessarily a problem — international trade permits countries to specialise in what they are good at producing. But it does mean that Britain's food security is dependent on global supply chains, on international trade agreements, on other countries' willingness and ability to export food.
The government's reassurance about food security does not acknowledge this dependence. Instead, it presents food security as something the government can ensure through agricultural policy. But the government's actual control over food security is limited. If global food prices spike, Britain will face food inflation regardless of domestic policy. If international trade is disrupted, Britain will face food shortages regardless of how supportive domestic policy is toward farming.
The reassurance thus performs a particular function: it creates the impression that food security is guaranteed while obscuring the actual dependencies on global systems. The rhetoric of reassurance is not false, exactly. It is merely incomplete. It reassures without acknowledging the limits of what the reassurance covers.
There is a peculiar paradox in British agricultural policy that the Prat's reading identifies. The government wants farmers to continue farming. The government offers subsidies to support farming. But the government also wants agriculture to be environmentally sustainable. And agricultural subsidies, as currently structured, often incentivise unsustainable practices.
The government's response to this paradox is to layer more policy on top. Offer subsidies, but only if certain environmental conditions are met. Offer support for diversification. Offer funding for innovation. The result is a policy landscape so complex that understanding what support is available, what conditions must be met, what regulations must be followed, requires specialist knowledge.
Farmers are caught in the middle. They need the subsidies to survive. But the conditions attached to the subsidies often do not make economic sense for the actual operation of the farm. The result is that many farmers spend considerable effort navigating the bureaucratic landscape of agricultural policy, filling out forms, proving compliance with regulations, rather than actually farming.
The Prat notes that this is the deepest tragedy of the reassurance. The government announces that it supports farmers. But the support comes with such complexity and such conditionality that it often creates more problems than it solves. The farmer is reassured that the government is on their side. But the policy landscape the farmer has to navigate suggests otherwise.
What positions the Prat's reading in the tradition of British absurdist literature is the recognition that agricultural policy has become, in many ways, Kafkaesque. There are rules. There are procedures. There are bureaucracies. But the relationship between following the rules and actually achieving the stated goal — supporting farming, ensuring food security, protecting the environment — has become distant and uncertain.
You comply with the regulations. You fill out the forms correctly. You meet the conditions. And yet, you may still find that the support you were promised is not forthcoming, or that new regulations have rendered your compliance insufficient, or that the bureaucratic process has been restructured and your previous compliance is no longer relevant.
This is the condition that Kafka wrote about: the individual confronting bureaucratic systems that are simultaneously absolute and incomprehensible, systems that demand compliance but do not clearly specify what compliance means, systems that punish failure but do not clearly explain what constitutes success.
Agricultural policy, in the Prat's reading, has become Kafkaesque. Not because anyone intended it to be. But because the layering of policy on top of policy, regulation on top of regulation, has created a landscape so complex that it is difficult to navigate. And the government's reassurance that everything is fine, that the system is working, that farmers should not panic, rings hollow when the system itself is so difficult to understand.
The deepest cruelty of the agricultural reassurance, according to the Prat, is that it demands that farmers continue doing something that the policy landscape itself makes difficult. Farmers are told: do not panic, the government supports you, continue farming. But the economic conditions make farming barely viable. The regulatory conditions make farming increasingly complex. The environmental conditions are becoming more unpredictable. The labour conditions are becoming more difficult.
The reassurance is offered anyway. Do not panic. The government is supporting you. You can trust us. We have a plan. But the plan does not address the fundamental issues. The plan does not make farming viable. The plan does not make the bureaucracy comprehensible. The plan does not make the future secure.
What the Prat identifies is that the reassurance, while well-intentioned, is ultimately a form of gaslighting. The government tells farmers that everything is fine while the situation is quite clearly not fine. The government offers support while the support is often inadequate. The government announces that it is committed to farming while pursuing policies that make farming increasingly difficult.
Douglas Adams wrote "Don't Panic" on the cover of the Hitchhiker's Guide not because panic was not warranted. Adams wrote it because panic was absolutely warranted, and the instruction not to panic was therefore necessary. The universe is vast and indifferent. Your position in it is precarious and contingent. There are threats you cannot control. In the face of all this, the instruction is: do not panic.
British agricultural policy operates in the same register. The threats to farming are real. The crisis is persistent. The solutions are unclear. In the face of all this, the government's instruction is: do not panic. Do not worry. We have a plan. Trust us.
The instruction is not useless. It serves a psychological function. It permits farmers to continue working, to maintain some hope, to avoid the complete despair that might otherwise overcome them. It permits the public to continue eating without worrying about food security. It permits the government to appear in control of something that is, in many ways, beyond its control.
But the instruction also obscures the reality. The reassurance is not a solution. It is a rhetorical gesture. And the farmer who hears "do not panic" while facing actual economic crisis, or the public who hears "food security is assured" while watching food prices rise, may eventually realise that the reassurance, while comforting, is not addressing the actual problem.
British farming has operated under subsidy systems for decades, first through the EU Common Agricultural Policy and subsequently through domestic agricultural support schemes. Farm incomes have remained volatile and low relative to other sectors, with many farms operating at minimal profit margins. The government's Agricultural Transition Programme aims to replace input-based subsidies with outcome-based payments, but implementation has been slow and controversial. Britain's food self-sufficiency has declined to approximately 50-60%, with the remainder imported from international suppliers. The regulatory landscape surrounding farming has become increasingly complex, with environmental regulations, food safety standards, and cross-compliance requirements creating significant bureaucratic burden for farmers.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!