Salad grower and NFU member Stephen Watkins faced environmentalist and Guardian journalist George Monbiot on Newsnight last week on the issue of flood damage to farmland.

Watkins, who has 250 acres underwater in Worcestershire near the river Severn, said dredging the rivers would prevent more flooding while Monbiot insisted it was “useless and counterproductive”.

Speaking on Newsnight, Watkins said: “I am a great believer in dredging the rivers. The reason for that is that more and more building has meant that flood water runs off the land more quickly.”

Watkins said that he had been given funding by the EU to manage low-lying land because rivers aren’t actually taking water away.

“If dredging had been continuously happening then water would actually be able to get out to sea,” he said.

Monbiot retaliated and said that farmers are rightly upset, but they are looking for a dramatic and “muscular” response from the government.

He said: “Dredging actually causes more dangerous floods that were there already.”

Monbiot said that the only way to control lowland flood damage was to concentrate on upland catchment areas, for instance by removing sheep and planting more trees.

He said: “We should be paying farmers in places where it’s safe to store water on their land.”

The government has said that dredging in the rivers around the Somerset Level will take place as soon as it’s safe to do so, although the Environment Agency has said this is only part of the solution.

Dr Hannah Cloke, a flooding expert from the University of Reading, told The Guardian that the prime minister's assertion that dredging could provide a long-term solution to flooding is 'just not backed up by the evidence'.

More strong winds and heavy rain are predicted across southern England for the rest of this week. Two severe flood warnings, meaning there is a danger to life, have been issued for the Somerset Levels area.

John Rowlands, from the Environment Agency, told the BBC: 'It is very rare that we issue a severe flood warning.

'It really is pretty desperate. We really cannot stress highly enough that this is a risk to life and property now.'

Yesterday Prince Charles, as patron of the Countryside Fund, visited farmers and residents affected by the flooding in the Somerset Levels. He said it was a “tragedy” that no action had been taken sooner.

The Prince's Countryside Fund is set to donate £50,000 from its emergency fund to help farmers in Somerset, reported the BBC.

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