And now here is my final guest blog of the week from JohannTasker, chief reporter for Farmers Weekly magazine.  He follows contributions from Matthew Naylor, Allan Buckwell and Caroline Drummond.  They have all offered their thoughts on how to balance production with conservation in response to a presentation that I gave to the Oxford Farming Conference this week.   You can read a copy of my paper here.

Johann's headline is "Farmers an all too easy target".

"It’s all too easy to blame farmers when food leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. And the same is true when it comes to the countryside – or at least the state of the rural environment and the wildlife it supports.

After all, agriculture is our most visible rural industry. The number of farmers may be declining but agriculture remains the UK's biggest land user, with crops and livestock dominating most of the country’s surface area.

Yet the average consumer has little idea of what happens on the average farm. The closest most people get to seeing food produced these days is on TV or through the car or train window as they hurtle from one town to the next.

It’s hardly surprising. We’re a post-industrial urban-based society. So while an army of celebrity chefs feeds our seemingly insatiable appetite for TV shows about food, few of us actually get our hands dirty producing it.

Despite the resurgent popularity of programmes like BBC Countryfile. our understanding as a nation of the complexities facing farmers striving to make a living from the land remains limited.

Many of the major factors influencing agricultural productivity and profitability are out of farmers’ hands. The most obvious is the weather. But food producers are also at the mercy of political and economic forces they can do little about.

Farmers have done a great job over the past 70 years responding to politicians’ demands for cheap, plentiful food. So successfully, in fact, we now spend under 15% of our income on food – less than half the proportion 50 years ago.

Having succeeded on this score, now farmers are being asked to produce food more sustainably. But for this is to work more widely, consumers must keep their side of the bargain too – valuing food more highly and wasting less of it.

That’s because the marketplace doesn’t reward farmers for looking after the countryside. Which explains the growing shift in farm subsidies away from food production and towards environmental measures.

A new generation of farmers is signing up to environment schemes like never before. And their initially skeptical fathers, reared on a diet of post-war subsidies to boost production at seemingly any cost, are gradually being won over.

If anyone is moving too slowly when it comes to rebalancing food production and conservation, it is the policy-makers not the food producers.

In the 20 years I’ve been involved in agriculture, I’ve seen a step change in the way land is managed. Farmers are more than willing to embrace their environmental responsibilities – and more will do so, with wider support."

Do you agree with Johann?

It would be great to hear your views.


  • Think this says everything and the fact that we spend half as much of our income now as opposed to 50 years ago proves how successful farmers have been in producing cheap food for everyone and before the critics pan farmers for not being more wildlife friendly they need to consider that fact.Of course if we are only spending half as much of our income now on food there should be plenty left to pay farmers for environmental schemes to get what conservationists want.Here we hit another major problem that is to get the schemes set up with requirements that will solve the problem and at the moment all that happens is farmers get criticised because farmland bird numbers still declining.

    Let us all stick to the fact that the schemes need the right ingredients,the critics conveniently ignore the fact that every farmer in the scheme does the required elements or he cannot get his payment.Why cannot most really clever people in fact some brilliant people get this simple fact.

  • Hi Martin, just to say I have no hands on farming experience and knowledge as Johann Tasker obviously has. I am therefore only able to comment on what I observe in the farming countryside and what Hope Farm does so well. However it seems to me that much of what Johann is saying is thoroughly reasonable and makes sense. I have thought for some time now. that the lead to farm for; sustainability, productivity and biodiversity must come from the top and one should not blame "the troops" if this falls short. Of course there will always be a few farmers who are not interested in biodiversity or sustainability, but I would have thought they are relatively few. The key to ensuring more farmers follow these three goals is leadership from organisations like the NFU, DEFRA, and the EU. This is absolutly vital and why some of the statements made by Mr Kendall of the NFU on these issues before Christmas were disappointing. Basically I agree, it is "too easy to blame farmers". it is the people at the top of the industry to whom complaints should be addressed.

  • Further to my last posting. I have accessed your paper from your earlier blogs. Could just be a problem today. Sorry!

    Richard.

  • Martin, I can't open your paper about this. I get a message saying Internet Explorer can access the website but is denied entry, probably because a password is required. I wonder if others are having the same problem.

    Richard.