At 1pm today the RSPB is having a live debate with the very clever Prof Allan Buckwell from the CLA and the NFU's President Peter Kendall on whether UK farming is an environmental hero or villain. For details - click here.
You can watch the debate online and even join in. No doubt I'll be blogging about it tomorrow if not before. That is - if I survive.
I wonder whether the NFU President will accept that farmland bird numbers are much lower than they were in the 1970s and 1980s? I wonder whether he will accept that this is mainly due to the way that we farm the countryside? I wonder whether he will agree that it matters? I wonder whether he will praise the work that the RSPB has done at Hope Farm where productivity has increased and wildlife too?
Perhaps the NFU will welcome our Stepping up for Nature campaign.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Is it unfair? I suggest not - Skylarks are but one bird and skylark patches are not shown to benefit any other bird. RSPB is is concerned about a whole suite of farmland birds [farmland bird index?], not just the one? Yes Hope Farm has many farmer visitors, but they may be the converted? I also suggest you have to convince Mr Kendall, have you?