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Health and Harmony:
Link and Defra's future farming event

Today, Wildlife and Countryside Link members, along with many other experts, come together with Defra to explore how future farming and land management policy can deliver a truly green Brexit.

Dr. Elaine King, Link's Director, kicks off the proceedings with this speech.

April 2018

"Good morning. Thank you for joining us today. When we are constantly faced with competing demands on our time, it’s encouraging that so many of you are here to share your expertise at such a critical time for farming and our environment.

It’s great to see so many familiar faces, and new ones too, so welcome to you all.

We were very pleased to be invited by Defra to host this event. It’s such a great opportunity to bring together the diverse interests from across Link’s membership - and beyond - to help shape a post Brexit farming policy that really is fit for the future.

At Link, our vision has long been for a farming and land management system that allows farmers to deliver high quality, sustainable produce, whilst also being supported to deliver the vital public benefits that society needs.

When we were bound by the unwieldly Common Agricultural Policy, this seemed a distant and hard-to-reach goal. But now, with this once-in-a-generation opportunity, making our vision a reality is much more within our grasp.

So we are very encouraged by the Government’s ambition and we hope that today - and in our subsequent conversations with colleagues at Defra - we can provide the expertise and solutions to fix what is broken in our food and farming system and make real our collective vision for a bright farming future.

It will come as no surprise that Defra’s focus on using public money to deliver public goods was warmly welcomed by our members. I must stress though, that the public goods listed in the consultation as potentially eligible for public support are not ‘either / or’, as the consultation might suggest.

Our 48 members, despite individually having different focuses and priorities, would agree that it’s not meaningful, for example, to rank clean water as more important than world-class standards of animal welfare, or iconic landscapes over healthy soils, or rich and abundant wildlife over providing people access to beautiful places.

Public goods are, by their very nature, interlinked, and to truly reap the benefits of each, all must be given equal priority.

I’d also like stress that our vision for a future policy is one that seamlessly integrates farming and other types of land management with the delivery of public benefits in a truly sustainable way.

We want farm businesses and rural communities to thrive, and to be underpinned by a healthy and resilient natural environment that can be enjoyed by all.

And we know, from the close relationships our members have with many farmers, that this is what a huge number of farmers want too.

For years, farmers have struggled within a system that delivers little profit for their produce and little incentive to do ‘the right thing’. They too want to see leadership from Government that provides the freedom and resources to make positive change.

With this overwhelming consensus for a step change in farming policy - now being echoed in Defra’s consultation - we are urging Government to enshrine its ambition in legislation.

We want a clear purpose for public intervention in agriculture, and a definition of ‘public money for public goods’ in the forthcoming Agriculture Bill.

To achieve this bold vision will also require significant resources, so we need binding commitments from Government in the Agriculture Bill that the necessary funding will be made available, and the appropriate mechanisms put in place to make sure that this Government, and future Governments, have the resources and accountability to deliver a policy that is truly fit for the future.

And as part of a UK-wide network of organisations, I also cannot emphasise more strongly how important it is for Westminster and the devolved administrations to work collaboratively to ensure a coherent approach that delivers for farming, people and nature across the UK.

Radical change such as this is never easy, and it will take time, but I hope that today we will demonstrate that there really is both the appetite and expertise to make this happen.

We are excited to add our voices to this shared conversation and I would urge all our colleagues at Defra to pick the brains of the many and varied experts in the room today, but not to let the conversation end there.

Link’s strength is in the expertise of its members and we will always be available to provide advice and solutions to those who need them."

Dr. Elaine King

Director, Wildlife and Countryside Link

Follow @ElaineWCL and @WCL_News

The opinions expressed in this blog are the author's and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.