You only have two weeks to join over 700 others in voting in the Nature of Harming ‘award’ – the results will be announced on April Fools’ Day. Although there is a clear leader, one candidate made a strong bid for your vote this week and it seems that another is planning to get your…
Tag: NFU
NIAs again
Nature is everywhere, it’s all around us and it is in trouble in many places around us. When government was looking for areas to qualify as Nature Improvement Areas it had plenty of places from which to choose – 76 proposals came forward for the £7.5m funding that was available for just 12 sites. Those…
A busy week
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…
The NFU elects…?
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Today the NFU Council will elect its new President, Vice President and Deputy President – except there is a fair chance that all three will be re-elected. The NFU has a very progressive voting system – in some ways. If you are the incumbent then you need to get an increasing proportion of the votes…
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…
You are directly affected, but Defra has forgotten you
Defra has started a consultation on reform of the Common Agricultural Policy – don’t panic, you have until 5 March to respond. But Defra only wants views from those who may be affected by these proposals. And that appears to mean English farmers, environmental groups, rural communities, non-governmental organisations and other interested parties. But there…
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…
November was the cruellest month…
November was a dismal month for nature in our country – just dismal. This week the Westminster government issued figures showing that farmland birds were at an all time low but didn’t bother to comment on what they might do about it. The Chancellor had a swipe at the environment and announced a review of…
Farmland birds reach lowest point since records began
The latest (up to 2010) official figures for the UK Farmland Bird Index (and for that for England alone where things are just a tad worse) were published on Tuesday. They show a further decline in numbers of the suite of 19 farmland birds which brings the index to its lowest ever point. Take a…