The government’s announcement last week that the Agricultural Wages Order may finally be scrapped is the best piece of news I’ve heard in a long time.

As many readers will be aware, all farmers are forced to follow a set of mandatory employment guidelines that sit above all other UK and EU employment law. This 59-page Order is an exercise in red tape – it even comes with a 26-page guide!

To say that I will be pleased to see the Order go is an understatement. It’s not that I am against fair wages and employment conditions, in fact the contrary. Our workers are well protected by UK and EU employment and wage legislation.

There are three reasons I dislike the AWO so much; firstly, it gives the impression that the agricultural industry pays everyone at a very low level, otherwise why negotiate minimum wage awards every year? In fact, very few workers are paid the minimum. Most seasonal harvest workers on our farm would average £7 to £7.50 per hour, some a lot more. Nationally, full-time farm workers are paid 41 per cent above the industry minimums set by the Agricultural Wages Board. We are private businesses that need to compete on wages with other large employers to recruit staff.

Secondly, if you are a business that grows and processes on one site then you have two different sets of employment rules to apply to your team of workers – utter nonsense, especially if you need some flexibility among staff to switch between different roles.

Thirdly, it is archaic to have an annual negotiation that results in one headline wage settlement that impacts every farming business, regardless of each farm’s structure, labour needs and its trading conditions.

We shouldn’t forget that all this remains more than a decade after minimum wage legislation saw minimums for workers, regardless of occupation. It’s when measured against the wider working regulations that the oddities really stand out. In what is already a diverse industry, farm businesses and workers have to work within a complex grading system for all workers; it awards grade one workers with 2p more than the national minimum wage; it awards more sick pay and more holiday than is set down in our national law, and all workers must be paid a set overtime rate, again in contrast to our national employment laws.

So I for one will be delighted if the AWO is abolished and this piece of red tape finally leaves my desk. My only disappointment is that progress has been a long time coming. If we are going to compete globally, our systems have to be more effective than this.