The National Farmers Union's vice president blasted the government for its indifference and inaccurate information at the Oxford Farming Conference.
Paul Temple said that it has taken global events including floods, food riots and collapsing financial markets to get many people to acknowledge agriculture’s importance in meeting some of the major challenges facing the world.
Productive agriculture and the environment are inextricably linked and the NFU will be focusing its campaigning efforts over the next 18 months on highlighting agriculture’s unique ability to deliver both.
Mr Temple said: “Even now, Defra has started to wake up to food security but all too often it is still preaching the environmental agenda with an evangelical zeal. In the Council that decided the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Health Check, the British government’s highest priority, appears to have been to retain set aside measures, to take one example.
“Of course, if Defra is the preacher, then it has an enthusiastic choir behind it singing from the same hymn sheet. There are all too many single issue bodies, pressure groups and NGOs all too ready to sing the same tired old song on farming’s role in biodiversity loss.
“What we believe, and what NFU campaigns for the next 18 months will focus on, is the need for a new balance between productive agriculture and the environment. Telling the public that, actually, productive agriculture and the environment are inextricably linked, indeed complementary, and no other industry but ours can deliver both.
Temple also pointed to the NFU’s Why Farming Matters as a key component of modern agriculture: “Re-affirming what is important about UK farming - our farming - our members’ farming, is essential, because if we don’t do it, who will? Not our own Government department, that’s for sure, and certainly not the various NGOs whose agendas often sit in direct conflict to farming’s.
“Only we - both as farmers, and as the NFU - can positively affect the image of our industry,” he said.
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