It has not exactly been an easy first year in the job for Defra’s minister for Sustainable Farming and Food, Jeff Rooker.

Coming into office last May, he inherited the chaos of the Rural Payments Agency and the Single Farm Payment fiasco, as well as an industry irked by the formation of an unwanted umbrella levy board and the ongoing row over the power of the supermarkets.

Throw into the mix the hysteria surrounding the arrival of bird flu in the UK and you’ve got a turbulent first few months in the job.

Despite that, Rooker is open and amiable when we speak, a man clearly at ease with the progress his department has made in that time. An experienced campaigner, his straight-talking style is refreshing for a politician. The minister is currently in the midst of a busy series of public appearances that has seen him speak at a number of major industry conferences.

At one of them, the Sentry Farming conference, Rooker made a number of comments about the difficulty farmers and growers have in obtaining planning permission, particularly when it comes to diversifying their businesses. And he is forthright in his determination that work needs to be done on how local authorities interpret national policy in this area. “Farmers need more income streams,” he insists. “If we are going to say to people: ‘we want you to be near the market, with no subsidies, and react to demand, be sustainable, professional, business-like - and by the way we’ve got two balls and shackles to put round you to do that - we have to look at the barriers that stop people being serious as entrepreneurs.”

He goes on to state that he is entirely in favour of polytunnels for extending the season and retorts that people who want the whole countryside green ‘can forget it - it hasn’t been green for years.’

Rooker is equally frank when it comes to discussing the possible labour crisis that could follow the imminent axing of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme. The man responsible for cutting numbers in the scheme from 25,000 to 16,000 when he was Home Office minister, you could reasonably expect him to launch a defence of the government’s policy. But while stopping short of openly criticising the decision to phase out SAWS, Rooker does imply that the approach will not solve the problem. “This change because of EU enlargement is a serious one,” he says. “But with SAWS all the evidence is that people came, worked and went back home. Chopping SAWS isn’t going to reduce the number of immigrants working in this country.”

Rooker goes on to promise that he will be meeting representatives of both the horticulture industry and Home Office ministers to see what can be done, with an aim of making clear why the government has come to its decision. “I think everyone wants to understand exactly why the rules have been created the way they are, and I realise there’s quite a few people that think it’s probably gone a bit too far and it may not work.

“However we have got an agreement with the Home Office that if recruitment doesn’t work then we can go elsewhere. The risk is that the agents lose their contracts with the universities. We are aware of this and we’ll have meetings particularly as we go into the new growing season, because I want it to work. It’s in nobody’s interest to have shortages of labour meaning we can’t pick our own crops.”

And the controversial subjects don’t stop there. The formation of the new Levy Board UK was, as Rooker admits, highly unpopular in horticultural circles, but he still believes that growers will benefit from the new system. “I think growers can reasonably expect to benefit, certainly in the reduction of back office costs, there’s no doubt about it,” he insists. “And I would hope that they can devote a greater share of the money to promoting the industry.”

The idea of the new organisation, Rooker explains, is not to cross-fertilise the money from one area to another, meaning money paid by growers should not be going to benefit meat producers, for example. Of the 10 members of the new board, six will be the sector chairs, meaning that if those six agree on something then that will become the policy. He also expressed confidence in the ability of overall chair John Bridge to bring a fresh look at things and reduce costs to help get better value out of the levy.

Rooker also promises to review the way the system is functioning after a couple of years, adding that Rosemary Radcliffe would likely be keeping a very close eye on what is happening.

The horticulture minister also had some pretty forthright words to say on the recent Competition Commission interim report into the state of the grocery sector. He denies any suggestion that it did not have a wide enough remit - he wrote to the Commission personally to implore them to consider the wider issues - but agrees that it is unrealistic to expect growers to come forward with evidence of supply chain abuses. “In some ways I would like to hope that they [the Competition Commission] are being proactive in investigating, even in a ‘detective mode’, what happens down the supply chain. The sometimes unfair commercial pressures. There are some areas where the big boys go right the way through the chain, quite irrelevant to the main product. And I think that’s outrageous.”

One way to avoid this, according to Rooker, is to find a niche and alternative markets. “The only way you can fight back, in some ways, is if you are in a position to stick two fingers up to these people. Say ‘we don’t want your contract’ or ‘we’ll supply you on our terms.’” While he confesses that there might only be a relatively small number of growers who feel able to do this, he stressed that it is up to the public to support local and speciality foods.

The industry has done much to react to testing government targets on peat and pesticide reduction, and Rooker is quick to acknowledge that. He explains that he has sat in on the Pesticide Advisory Committee and is aware of the difficulty in getting new products through the system, but at the same time it is ‘in the interests of everyone’ to reach a point of minimal use of these products. That is not to say he is not a realist though: “We’ve got to use pesticides because we’re growing crops to eat, not to feed insects. We want to share the plant with the insects, but the food is for us.”

As someone who is a keen advocate of local production, you might have thought that Lord Rooker would be in favour of leveraging every advantage that home-produced food could give itself. But on the subject of food miles he had this to say: “I don’t take this argument about food miles. It’s very seductive - food miles, help the environment - it’s not strictly true. But the fact of the matter is, local food, local production, viability of our rural communities and the populations that live there - those are good enough reasons for me, we can deal with climate change in other areas.”

The drive for local is among a number of reasons why Rooker has great confidence in the state of the horticulture industry today. And if growers can continue the trend of working together that is starting to emerge, their position will only be strengthened.

“In this country compared to many in Europe there’s been in the past almost an abject refusal to co-operate,” he maintains. “If there’s more co-operation among growers and farmers, it’s the only way they can get more control over the food chain.”

In France and Germany, Rooker opines, there is a much more collaborative mindset, but working more closely together here would lead to grower businesses becoming more sustainable, better able to deal with their customers and give them better leverage to react to the market.

“I don’t see it as an antagonistic thing. It means you give up a bit of control in some ways in order for greater share as a co-operator,” Rooker says. There is definite movement in this direction, he believes, and by doing this it will allow more added value to get back onto the farms.

Rooker clearly has faith in his team going forward. He has taken confidence from the progress made with the Rural Payments Agency, and believes that the industry is aware that they have worked hard to resolve the issues. He also believes that Defra is trying to work with the industry to find practical solutions to problems and not solve issues simply with a subsidy from Defra.