Reading NFU president Peter Kendall's speech this week it is hard not to feel deflated.
He called for ministers to switch agricultural policy away from biodiversity, and concentrate more on productivity. This comes at a time when Defra has clearly set out its stall to try to understand how to increase productivity whilst enhancing the environment. It is only when all sides are open about the challenges we face that we have a hope of coming up with answers.
It is worth remembering that the NFU and RSPB are partners in the Campaign for the Farmed Environment which encourages farmers to put in place wildlife measures on their land. Peter's latest comments threaten to undermine this approach.
I am genuinely saddened by the speech. I thought that we were all signed up to the Government approach led by Agriculture Minister, Jim Paice. My worry is that this could undermine all the hard work being done by farmers, the Government and conservationists to help our threatened farmland wildlife.
Like Peter, I celebrate the environmental progress that is being made, for example the improvement in the quality of many rivers and the work by passionate farmers who have helped bring some of the most threatened farmland species back from the brink.
But as he well knows there is a continuing decline in farmland birds across the UK – and overall numbers have plummeted by 50 per cent since 1970. We have also seen worrying falls in the numbers of butterflies, wild flowers and other species from our farmed countryside.
Yes more research and development into productivity is needed in the industry – but not at the expense of agri environment schemes which deliver so much.
What the Government, the RSPB and many farmers out there want to see is a healthy and productive countryside that supports our native wildlife. These comments are an unhelpful distraction from all our efforts.
Biodiversity and food production are not mutually exclusive. Our work at Hope Farm has demonstrated this. We have maintained a commercially viable farm whilst tripling the numbers of farmland birds.
We have taken steps to reassure all those who have worked so hard get the Campaign for the Farmed Environment off the ground, and all those farmers who are doing what they can to create a space for nature on their land that their efforts are valued.
I hope that Peter does the same.
This is the policy area where RSPB really plays its strongest hand. I have to agree with every sentiment expressed here. There are times when one wonders if NFU sees or appreciates the countryside that they work in or are they so blinded by the sound of the radio in thie tractor and so dominated by their industrilised treadmill that they no longer see the fertilised desert they have created? They are certainly immune from the profound hypocrisy of the government that their "countryside"has elected which is deamnding 5% reductions and greater "efficiencies" for every public pound spent; while abolishing the agricultural workers wages board and criticising the EU that has so generously supported their industry in its subsidy.
I have come to the persuasion that farmers should be only paid as it were "per lapwing reared" and environmental benefit delivered.
Peter Plover