Fair enough Minister

On Monday I did an interview for the BBC Farming Today programme, with the NFU’s Guy Smith.  If you want to listen to that interview you can but you won’t learn anything new from it as the NFU is still in denial over the loss of farmland wildlife and the role that farming has played…

A farmer writes

Last week I received this letter from a farmer and I’m grateful to him for permission to publish it here along with my reply to him. Dear Dr Avery I have read articles and letters from you from time to time particularly in Farmers Weekly. We have a small farm of about 150 acres of…

Too nice?

You have one week to go before you can see the final results of the Nature of Harming ‘award’.  Cast your vote now and ask your friends (you do have friends?) to cast their’s too, please.  Nearly 1000 people have voted. Here, at this late stage – is some rationale to go behind it: We…

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…