Congratulations to the re-elected NFU President, Peter Kendall, whose speech at the NFU Conference was described as ‘shocking and regressive‘ by one of his own members on this site on Wednesday. That farmer said he voted for the NFU in the Nature of Harming ‘award’ and writes rather harshly that ‘Peter Kendall is a PR…
Tag: farmers
Paying farmers by results 2
Last week I posted a blog about paying by results in agri-environment schemes which generated lots of comments. Here’s another way that we could pay by results. Like any system, including the current failing one, this proposal has its problems of monitoring, cost, fairness etc but it’s worth thinking about alternatives when the current system…
Yesterday – three strands
I enjoyed yesterday. I launched the Nature of Harming ‘award’ and it generated a lot of interest. Around 250 votes yesterday was pretty good and there was a clear leader at the end of the day. Lots of varied comments and debate – very interesting. If you haven’t voted yet then please do so here. …
Have a look at these three short films
26 seconds worth of the Earth heating up 2 minutes of We miss you – I won’t say anything otherwise I might spoil it for you 33 minutes but you get the gist from the first few moments and then it’s up to you whether you stay with it – US farmers talking about local…
What the public wants
According to a survey by ICMResearch for CPRE more than four out of five of the public believe that farmers have a responsibility to look after the landscape and wildlife for future generations – so most people are wrong! I don’t think that farmers have that responsibility but I am grateful to those who behave…
Where was the bulldog spirit on 19 December Mrs Spelman?
Comments Off on Where was the bulldog spirit on 19 December Mrs Spelman?
We used to talk about joined up government, but I haven’t heard the phrase used so often these days. Maybe that’s just as well when the Defra Secretary of State regards biodiversity as the spice of life and the Chancellor regards it as the kiss of death for the economy. But we would have to…
Badgers – slow Paice
On Wednesday, Defra announced their next slow pace towards a large amount of badger-bothering. What they said wasn’t very much and wasn’t very clear. It seems that some time in the autumn, that’s autumn 2012, there will be a six-week trial of farmer-led badger killing in two ‘pilot’ areas of southwest England which are yet…
Jim Paice doesn’t make stewardship pledge to taxpayers
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…
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…
A slightly dull report
Yesterday’s blog considered an interesting report by gamekeepers about the state of the countryside and today’s blog is about a slightly dull report by the BTO, RSPB and the JNCC about the state of breeding bird populations in the countryside. Yesterday’s report was based on a questionnaire survey whereas this one is based on tens…