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.
It was an interesting debate Mark. It indicated the complexity of the whole agricultural system and I got drowned by all the acronyms and pillars 1 & 2! I think Nyati has a point about Skylark patches, although a brilliant solution to a problem, it cannot stand as an overall argument for farming change. The RSPB must be able to put over a much wider strategy for the reform of CAP, subsidies etc. I thought it very difficult in that forum, and with the probable followers of the debate, to get over the thrust of the RSPB's arguments.
Did you really do it all from the pub!!
Nyati - skylarks are but one bird, and but one bird that has halved in population - but it is a clear example, contra to your statement, of where the prescriptions and management practices were actually developed by the RSPB and work spectacularly well. And remember - plenty of blogs on it - that a great many bird species have increased at Hope Farm. Surely you aren't suggesting that the NFU Pres remains unconverted?
I wonder whether they will challenge you on your opposition to culling the ever-increasing diseased tuberculous badger population?
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?
Nyati - well that's just a little unfair. Skylark patches, for example, were developed at Hope Farm and by RSPB researchers and have helped skylark numbers to more than treble there. But I'd be very happy if Peter Kendall praises Hope Farm and some others too. Will he? And Hope Farm welcomes hundreds of farmers every year to see how we have done what we have done - and has done so for over a decade.