The Defra Agriculture Minister James Paice told his fellow farmers that he wanted them to be able to opt out of their current agri-environment agreements if CAP reform changed the rules. This seems fair enough to me. I can’t quickly find his words on the Defra website but the Farmers Weekly report them here. Mr…
Tag: CAP
An open letter to Peter Kendall, President of the NFU
Dear Peter As the President of the National Farmers Union you claim to be the ‘voice of farming’ and last week you made a speech where you said that there is no ‘biodiversity crisis’ and government should ‘switch its focus from biodiversity’ to production. Speaking as one of the people who pays for your and…
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…