It’s more than 18 months since the current ministers walked confidently into Defra’s headquarters at Nobel House after the May 2010 General Election (with one change of Lord in the interim). I’m glad that we have not seen too much chopping and changing of ministers under the Cameron (Clegg) coalition government, as that rarely leads…
Tag: NFU
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…
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…
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…