Joint-up thinking needed on British agriculture and the countryside - Yorkshire Post Letters

Joined-up thinking needed on British agriculture and the countryside - Yorkshire Post Letters

From: Peter Auty, Sunnybank, Great Hatfield.

When is the UK going to get some joined up thinking when it comes to British agriculture and the countryside in general? It feels like the rural way of life is under constant threat.

Food production, both arable and animal, needs some blue sky thinking. All sides, farmers, NFU, CLA, Defra, MPs and the government as a whole, need to be singing from the same song sheet, they are not.

All prejudices need to be put aside such as, rewilding, environmentalism, veganism etc. for the debate to restructure farming to enable the farmers, the people at the coal face so to speak, can get on with the job of producing good quality food and in amounts to make the UK self-sufficient in all staple foods, nothing less is acceptable.

Farmers protest outside the Oxford Farming Conference in January. PIC: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire

Too many small groups are wanting money for this or that, when their only aim is to secure funding for their own small society. The thinking should be for the whole country.

Every now and then Brexit is raised and blamed for all problems. We are now an independent country and it's time for the government to start thinking that way, not harking back to a time when decisions for the UK were taken in Brussels or Strasbourg.

Don't blame everything on Brexit, blame it on the EU, who's only aim is to make things difficult for the UK until it eventually capitulates and gives in, the inept government is making that much easier, poor negotiations in the past did not help.

I digress. Farming is the life blood of the UK. We as a country have always excelled at working the land, money that should be available for subsidies is being syphoned off to fund other projects, leaving farmers short of funds for investing.

Farmers create the wonderful countryside we have come to take for granted and manage to grow food at the same time, what's not to like?

Greenhouse growers are unfairly treated by supermarkets, due to the high cost of energy in the UK, supermarkets should support our farmers 100 per cent. Not buying abroad when the going gets tough just to maintain their profits and share price. Supermarkets should be lobbying the government to reduce energy costs to businesses.

We are all in it together, or should be.