On Thursday evening I took part in an event in Ely where the RSPB laid out our Fens Futurescapes plans to a room full of farmers and others. It was also by way of a big 'thank you' to farmers with whom we have been working in the Fens for years on farmland bird recovery projects.
It was nice to see the event and the project covered very positively in Farmers' Guardian and Farmers' Weekly.
Several farmers on the night came and thanked me for the help of local RSPB staff in filling in forms (at no charge) which led to HLS agreements coming their way and for the RSPB's campaign over the summer to protect agri-environment funding from potential government cuts. It was very easy to 'love these farmers to bits' - because they are 'stepping up for nature'.
This was the type of event that cheers me up. I had a stinking cold, had been late to bed the night before, early up that morning and had an almost 2 hour drive home from Ely in front of me - but as I left I was buoyed up by the warmth of the farmers in the audience and the obviously good working relationships that we have with them.
The Fens are special - big skies and open landscapes. Together we can fill the air with the sound of buzzing bumblebees and singing skylarks - we can turn up the volume on the Fenland Futurescape.
Sooty - fair enough. At the risk of opening up a further debate, or being accused of being anti-farmer, the let me please comment as follows.
It's a good point that maybe we shouldn't expect farmers to be much more interested in nature than the general public. Actually, and please note that this is a pro-farmer remark, I would expect the proportion to be a bit higher than average. But, in England, 70% of farmers get wildlife-friendly farming grants. It certainly isn't their fault that the grants encourage those farmers to do a range of things - some of which won't deliver much for farmland wildlife. Not those farmers' fault at all. It's the fault of successive governments - and this one ought to sort it out please. However, the major block to sorting it out is not lack of knowledge it is lack of enthusiasm from those who claim to represent farmers. We would have much better wildlife-friendly farming schemes if it were not for the lobbying of the NFU in particular. For example, we would be able to ahve an effective ELS scheme in England. Farmers would then have to choose whether they enteres the new scheme - they are voluntary schemes after all - but the taxpayer could be reassured that those grants to farmers were delivering a real benefit. And if farmers didn't want to enter the schemes then that would, as now, be their choice.