Agriculture Minister, David Heath, seemed to enjoy Monday's visit to Hope Farm. While the skies were a little forbidding and lightning bolts crashed around us, we escaped a deluge and farm manager, Ian Dillon's record of never having to call off a farm visit remains intact.
As Defra prepares to implement the CAP deal and designs the new agri-environment scheme, I do think that there is a lot to learn from our experience at Hope Farm. The farmland bird package (including flower-rich margins, wild bird cover and in-field measures such as skylark plots) has been the key to our success at the farm. Unfortunately, although available to all farmers through the entry-level scheme, this has not had the take up that we had hoped. By offering a menu of options in the entry level scheme, farmers have been able to choose easy options such as grass margins which do little to benefit wildlife. This probably explains why the farmland bird index continues to bump along the bottom of the graph.
If some of these easier options were incorporated into the proposed greening conditions on 30% of farm support payments (so called Pillar 1 of the CAP), then this would free up more money to benefit farmland wildlife through well funded and well designed agri-environment schemes (under Pillar 2).
The visit of the Mr Heath attracted some attention from the farming press and I was glad to be able to support the minister's ambitions to transfer money from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2. You can see one of my windswept interviews here.
A minor distraction came from the President of the NFU, Peter Kendall, who had made some rather predictable comments about the future of farm subsidies and how farming should respond to the climate change crisis. The Guardian was one of the newspapers that ran the story and they were kind enough to publish my response yesterday (see here). Despite his job title, Peter is not representing all farmers as last month's letter to from the high nature value farming coalition demonstrated.
While there is still the small matter of the European Parliament needing to agree the European Budget for the 2014-2020 period, ministers do need to make decisions about CAP budget transfers and design of new schemes by the end of the year. For Defra ministers and officials to have any hope of recovering the 60% of farmland species which have declined over the past forty years, they will need to remember the Hope Farm experience and support the many farmers that want to support an attractive countryside rich in wildlife.
What did you think about Peter Kendall's comments about the future of farming?
It would be great to hear your views.
Martin, I see part of the problem is back to the 'medium is the message' scenario. We can use a lot of words about what we want but the general public will pick up the bits that are obvious while they skim the paper in the coffee shop waiting for the latte to cool.
I totally agree the comments by Peter Kendall were predictable and worrying but they sat under a large photo of Peter Kendall, NFU President. So any one scanning the page will connect NFU to the words they read. I think your response is perfectly correct but it sat under a large photo of Peter Kendall, NFU President, so any one simply scanning the page will also connect NFU to the words they read. I would also say that having read the letter from HNV Farming Coalition, without you telling me I wouldn't have known it had any connection to individual farmers at first glance. What we need is a similar letter from individual farmers and I know there are plenty out there who believe in it.
On a similar theme I did ask my wife what she thought 'Nature's Home' was likely to be and she immediately said 'that's one of those companies that sell bird food isn't it'. Is the rspb sure that the newly renamed magazine is going to have 'medium is the message' impact when it sits in the doctor's or vet's surgery, library shelf etc.
The Cotswold Water park sightings website
My Flicker page
As a you say Martin, Mr. Kendall's comments are very predictable and typical of what he normally says when referring to efforts to help farm land wildlife. I would like to question some of his thinking.
Firstly are we really experiencing more extreme weather conditions these days rather than before we became aware of global warming. In my younger days and before, there were the 1947 and 1962/3 terrible winters, there was the great Lynmouth flood of 1952 and the great North Sea storm surge of 1952. In the USA in the 1930s there was the great droughts of the mid west. So I am not sure these claims are right that we are experiencing more extreme weather these days. I would like to see some sound scientific data in this matter before people make statements about weather extremes
Secondly in the greater overall picture, maintaining the ecological health of our countryside and so protecting our wildlife in the longer term surely must be preferable than to trying to squeeze the last 1 or 2 percent of production out of the farm land and so generating all the ecological problems that go with this, such as over enrichment and soil degradation.. Hope Farm to clearly demonstrates the soundness of a sensitive and well thought out approach to farming. which nevertheless makes a good profit and has good crop productivity equal or better than most other farms.
Finally of course is the wrongly conceived and misguided policy of growing biofuels. If Mr Kendall wants a bit more farmland food productivity without further harming the wildlife and ecology of the countryside then he should be campaigning strongly for the abolition of biofuels. I may be wrong, but I don't think he is doing this.
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redkite