Was it just me - maybe it was - but was Peter Kendall in a bit of a bad mood today?
Have a look at the Farmers Guardian debate and judge for yourself.
Peter seemed very keen to have a go at me and the RSPB whatever I said.
And how predictable to see NFU mouthpiece Guy Smith going back to criticising the FBI - there is precious little acceptance, by the NFU President or by Guy Smith, that there is a problem with farmland birds. The NFU's attitude to the environment may be summed up by Peter Kendall's phrase 'wrapping (farmers) in green tape'. Remember please, NFU, that's the taxpayers' money you get and so there do have to be some rules attached to it.
But very good to see lots of good comments - many I guess from farmers who are working closely with the RSPB in all sorts of ways.
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A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Essex Peasant - so how did yields keep going up until recently ? (I'd be interested to know why home grown food has decreased - is it Oil seed rape going to non-food uses ?)
The stats are all very well - but birds probably illustrate it better - what about Yellowhammer ? When i started birdwtaching you ticked it like Robin or Great Tit. Now you have to look for them - I haven't seen one yet this year. I'd be interested in your views on an unintended consequence - oil seed rape and the extent to which it may have reduced lost grain because when it came in farmers had to make their combines much less leaky ?
One thing that did interest me in what Peter Kendall said was about less intensive farming - last night there was a farmer on TV talking about minimal cultivation as a way of saving diesel. I worked on ultra low volume herbicide application in the 1980s, aimed at reducing hauling water into the hills rather than the environment - but it 'placed' a much lower volume of active ingredient much more acurately due to consistent drop size & an electrostatic charge. I dobelieve in technology - just mistrust the way a lot of its applied (as with GM) - and its interesting to consider just how much we could achieve through applying even what we already know. I'd support public money going into helping farmers upgrade to lower inputs - just as it did so successfully to help dairying clean up its act & our rivers.
We really need to think a bit broader and open a dialogue between the town and countryside - I don't think the almost religious defence of how things are now is helping - I know NFU are trapped by their membership but bthere is a need for much braver leadership on both sides of the argument. And the farmers do themselves no good getting personal - RSPB have been very, very careful not to criticise individual farmers - they haven't got into how much subsidy individuals get, for example, an obvious target and have only named farmers they've praised.