To the editor,
I don’t recognise the British farming industry Chris Packham discusses in his recent interview.
Every farmer and grower I meet is proud to work the land to produce food for the nation while protecting and enhancing the British countryside.
And I am proud to lead the NFU (yes an effective lobbying organisation!), working on behalf of British farmers and growers to ensure their farming businesses, irrespective of size or sector, can thrive.
A successful farming sector matters to everyone.
Many times, I wondered why the NFU was so heavily referenced in an article in essence secured to promote a new brand of rice, but moreover why so many of those references were fundamentally wrong.
On trade, for example, the NFU brought together environmentalists, chefs and food producers to launch a campaign – supported by one million people – which secured clear policy changes from the government to ensure British farmers (and the public) are safeguarded from trade deals that would have seen food imports produced to standards that would be illegal here.
In the years that followed, we could not have been more vocal about the impacts of the Australia and New Zealand trade delas on UK farmers. This resulted in a welcome change of tact from the then government, which announced a pause in negotiations with Canada this year because it was demanding too much on beef and cheese products.
We also launched a campaign with WWF, to make it illegal to import many of the products that Packham talks about in the article and embed core standards within trade.
This is what driving forward meaningful change looks like.
At a time when our global security is unstable and the World Food Programme estimates more than 333 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity, we have to be able to feed ourselves. Not with words, but with nutritious food that we can and should produce more of, rather than rely on others, or export our environmental conscience abroad.
Farmers are committed to delivering food in harmony with nature and are a key part of solving the climate challenge but this needs to be embraced by the whole supply chain, including consumers, to speed up progress.
Tom Bradshaw
NFU President
