Kendall makes case for 'smart farming' at Tory conference

NFU President Peter Kendall will call on the Government to negotiate a CAP that is better geared to competitive farming, and does not discriminate against farmers in England.

He will also urge them to stick to their guns on planning reform, when addressing the NFU’s fringe meeting at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester today (Monday).

In a wide-ranging speech he will call for an inquiry to establish the real causes of wildlife decline, to nail the myth that this is solely down to so-called ’intensive farming’, and make the case for more investment in production-related research and development.

Mr Kendall will describe the central challenge facing the farming community as the need to produce more while impacting less on the environment. This would require ’smart farming’, driven by good science.

’Two points flow from this, he will say. ’The first is the importance of research. I understand the constraints on public expenditure, but this is one area where we really do need to spend more, particularly on efficient food production, because optimising the way we farm helps us meet the environmental challenges at the same time.

’The second concerns the planning system. Smart farming very often brings farmers into contact with the planning system, usually to their cost. In common with many other small businesses in the countryside, farmers need a planning system which encourages enterprise and delivers growth.

’So the Government must stick to its guns on the planning reforms, recognising that the countryside is not just somewhere to be preserved, but has to be enabled to prosper and grow. Getting a future planning policy that recognises the importance of food production is absolutely critical.’

On the CAP, Mr Kendall argued that farmers in England had been handicapped by a ’uniquely complex, uniquely discriminatory and uniquely badly delivered model of single payments’.

’We must use the next reform of the CAP to change that,’ he will argue.

’That means negotiating a policy framework that is simpler, more agricultural, in the sense of being geared to the needs of productive farming, and will put farmers in England on level competitive terms with farmers elsewhere in the EU ’ and in the UK if it comes to that.

Turning to the relationship between farming and the environment, Mr Kendall will address the way in which ’intensive farming’ is blamed almost exclusively for the decline in some wildlife species, despite farming becoming less intensive in recent years.

’Approaching seventy per cent of all the farmland in England is now in an agri-environment scheme; comparing 2008 with ten years earlier, we used 24 per cent less nitrogen fertiliser, 44 per cent less phosphate, 33 per cent less potash and 12 and a half million kilograms less pesticides.

’Yet still we get this mindless kneejerk from lazy commentators and stuck in the groove NGOs blaming ’more intensive farming’.

’This isn’t just irritating, it is dangerous. Because if intensive farming isn’t the sole or even the main cause for the undoubted declines we’re seeing in some wildlife species, then something else must be. And until we identify what those factors are, and do something to combat them, then the declines will continue.

’So my final challenge to Government is this: bring all of the interests at stake in this together, so that we can arrive at a joint understanding of what it is that is causing wildlife decline.

’When we know what factors are at work, we can work out a joint programme to combat them, in which the farming community will be more than happy to play its full, proportionate, part.’