Yesterday was exhilarating, confusing, elating and depressing - a typical day in the life of the RSPB?
The Comprehensive Spending Review announcement - or more properly announcements - were difficult to understand and sometimes difficult to believe. I met several journalists coming out of a Defra Press Conference who felt they weren't very much the wiser about what was happening. But they all seem to piece it together for their papers today!
The Independent majors on the rumbling story about whether National Nature Reserves are being handed over to wildlife conservation organisations as a cost-saving measure. The honest answer is that talks, quite complicated ones, continue and nothing is decided. The Indie also discloses that the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, who come under Defra's ambit, face cuts.
The Farmers Guardian has a good summary but states that Defra has been criticised for a lack of clarity over what is happening.
BBC online has a good overall view - but doesn't say much about Defra.
The Guardian contrasts the Greenest Government Ever claim with Defra having 'vicious' budget cuts - and covers our pleasure at the growth of HLS funds.
The Times (you have to pay to see it online so I don't) regards Defra as one of the losers of the day.
Farmers Weekly gives us a very fair hearing on the subject of HLS and Defra cuts -Thank you!
The CLA are cautiously supportive of what has happened - and welcome the result on HLS funding achieved by the campaigning of environmental organisations who received rather little help from the CLA!
But the NFU, the Voice of British Farming, strangely don't comment on the fact that HLS budgets will increase over the next few years and that this will allow more and more farmers to contribute to wildlife-friendly farming.
Natural England, Environment Agency, JNCC and the Forestry Commission England do not mention the CSR at all - a sign of things to come (or already here actually!) - like Victorian children, their place is to be seen and not heard.
Well Sooty, I certainly didn't mean to imply that farming is an easy way to make money. Let's hope the NFU do get round to it.
Should have added Stackyard that farmers find these schemes today relatively good and easy compared to lots in the past where you were expected to run ever faster to get the grants on offer,certainly in the past they were policed by ADAS officers etc more than today where they obviously seem to just check up by satellite I guess or just take the farmers word.In the 2ND world war there were draconian measures of course and if you did not obey really strict instructions of how to farm your farm was confiscated so now in comparison these schemes are easy. Certainly I was amazed when we were in the ELS scheme as we scraped in by just a few yards of hedgerow to spare by my measurement and expected it to be checked but it never was.
Suggest the NFU are quiet simply have not got round to it yet,best wait until next year.
No Stackyard completely wrong,doubt if any farmer are making a good living if you access it like any other business,i e hours worked and the return on capital would put lots into negative territory.I always suggest to anyone who thinks easy money in farming that I would encourage them to have a go there are schemes at almost all county councils to help new entrants.
Do not think there have ever been any takers.
Can almost guarantee if farmers were in other businesses and put the same effort in they would make much more money.
Proof-----study Hope Farm accounts very closely.You will see you are in for a big surprise using my principles of return on capital certainly no very good living.
Is the NFU silence over HLS a pointer that many farmers are making a very good living from 'ordinary' farming at the moment? Years ago I was at a conference where a speaker referred to the coming agri-environment schemes as "glass-case farming", an attitude that persists in some quarters perhaps (not that there's anything artificial about mainstream farming in the UK of course). Also, a lot of farmers just don't like to feel they are being told how to manage their land.