Yesterday’s blog was about the ‘coming out’ of the NFU’s President Peter Kendall who told the government in England to switch its focus from biodiversity to production. The RSPB was ‘disappointed’ and ‘saddened’ by the NFU’s position and as far as I can see that is the limit to wildlife NGO comment on this (but…
Category: FARMING
Casual but calculated anti-environmentalism
‘Government should switch its focus from bio-diversity and concentrate on farm productivity if it wants to make the most of British agriculture’s potential as an engine for growth‘ Peter Kendall, the President of the NFU, said on Wednesday. Kendall continued with this most callous, calculated and casual statement ‘The point is we haven’t got a…
FWAG
The Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group is ‘expected to go into administration in the coming days’. Henry Lucas the FWAG Chair of Trustees has written to a range of organisations giving them the bad news. FWAG is a little over 40 years old and has been a respected part of the wildlife and farming scene…
CFE
I wonder how the Campaign for the Farmed Environment is going? This is the Big Society alternative to regulating farming to replace the environmental benefits of set-aside. It’s difficult to tell how it is going from the Campaign website. Minister Jim Paice will have to decide how it is all going before Christmas in order…
CAP
I’ve been thinking about the proposed CAP reform and chatting to a few people about it too. The attempt to move towards more equal payments across the EU cannot be other than fair – probably. This is the agricultural equivalent of the idea of contraction and convergence. If it were decided to do the same…
A grain of truth
The dry spring weather in England (while I was driving through the rain in the USA) prompted fears about the grain harvest which, it is good to record here, have proved to be largely unfounded. As in any year there have been winners and losers across the country but the UK wheat yield is estimated…
Not to everybody’s liking
The proposals for a new Common Agricultural Policy have not been welcomed with uniform approval. The existing system is not simple and understanding the changes is not simple either. It will take time before all the implications are thought through but here is a rather good summary (it’s a good summary but it isn’t light…
Still plenty of hope
The success of the RSPB’s Hope Farm project gave me a lot of pleasure when I worked for the RSPB and I hope its continued success brightens the life of my successor, the excellent Martin Harper, now and again too. And it still pleases me that bird numbers continue to be so impressive on this…
CFE and NFU
Last week’s Farmers Guardian had a couple of short pieces on the Campaign for the Farmed Environment, answering the question ‘Is it working?’. I was asked to write the piece saying ‘No’ and this is what I wrote: “The CFE is a Big Society approach – ironically one set by the last Labour Government. Would…
Gone and forgotten?
‘Farmland birds in Europe fall to lowest levels‘ is a terribly sad headline. And we should be raging that things have got so bad. The grey (or ‘English’) partridge is in free-fall right across Europe with a decline of two thirds in numbers since 1990, and of 82% since 1980 according to the European Bird…