Am looking forward to today. I have a meeting with our Council this morning which is always fun. And tonight I am giving a talk to the South East England Agricultural Society. We are debating whether conservation is compatible with intensive farming.
I am not sure what sort of reception to expect, but I am sure it will be colourful evening. Judging by the state of the farmland bird and farmland butterfly indices, you could conclude that it is not possible to reconcile seemingly competing interests. But it is always worth remembering that it was farming practices that allowed many of the species which we now value to flourish. Many species even owe their vernacular names to their association with agriculture: cornflower and corn bunting to name but two.
But as we became better at producing food from our land - a fourfold increase in yield since 1945 - and as the Common Agriculture Policy exerted its influence, farmland wildlife suffered.
Great efforts have been made by many farmers over the past decade to try and reverse the declines but alas, the two biological indicators still show numbers are bumping along at the bottom of the graph. Some of the solutions are in our grasp - environmental stewardship can be made to work harder, payment rates for these schemes need to provide sufficient incentive for farmers to take up the right options and the new CAP must, of course, be made fit for purpose.
Given that so much of our nation is farmed, it is pretty clear that, if we want to recover farmland wildlife, we have no option other than to find harmonious coexistence between nature and farming. This is why I am so pleased that Defra, in its Natural Environment White Paper, committed to explore the question about how to improve productivity whilst enhancing the envirionment.
With luck, we should get a chance to explore some of the solutions at tonight's debate.
I'll let you know how I get on.
Do you think that it is possible to increase productivity whilst enhancing the environment? If so how? If not, what do we do?
It would be great to hear your views.
Would not like it thought I have it in for corvids and cats but when certain bird species numbers already low them and badgers plus others must have a large impact and without humans in time it would right itself I think but we make everything go to artificial levels and think we have to take a responability to help protect species under threat even though it is really distasteful to have to do so.