Exciting Times Ahead for British Farmers
UK - "British food and farming is now seen in a more positive light and a One Poll survey revealed that 78 per cent of shoppers believe supermarkets should now stock more British food," said NFU Vice President, Adam Quinney at this week’s Clwyd conference.
13 December 2013
2 minute read
Held at St Asaph, the Clwyd NFU Cymru annual conference was well attended with the guest speaker, Adam Quinney giving those present an interesting perspective of the farming industry. He said, "Farming has some exciting times ahead, agricultural colleges are seeing student numbers increasing and farming is becoming more of an appealing industry to be involved in.
"However, in order for the industry to really thrive in the long term, markets need to be paying farmers the returns they deserve, but this is not transpiring. Without this increased market price, we continue to rely on the single farm payment and this is why direct payments delivered through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) negotiations are so important to the rural economy."
Expressing concern that direct payments would be subject to significant additional modulation Mr Quinney said, "I would urge the Welsh and English Governments to give very careful consideration to exactly how much resource they need and where that additional resource will be spent. It will be unacceptable if this resource is taken off farmers from 2014 just to build up a ‘war chest’ of modulated funds."
Also addressing the Conference, NFU Cymru President, Ed Bailey said, "Until Welsh Government are in a position to provide real clarity on what they propose to deliver under the next Rural Development Plan (RDP) and what level of resource is needed to achieve the aims and objectives that it will set out under the next Wales RDP, then we don’t feel it appropriate that they should take additional resource out of pillar 1."
Ivor Beech, NFU Cymru Clwyd County Chairman, also addressed the meeting with his thoughts from his year in office, he thanked Mr Quinney for his positive messages about the future and Ed Bailey for all his work during his time as President of NFU Cymru, in particular the work done with the Welsh Government on the current round of CAP reform.
He also thanked Paul Williams, Group secretary of the Llanrwst office, for all of his work on behalf of NFU Cymru and local farmers and wished him all the best in the future. Mr Beech finished by thanking Allan Wilkinson, Head of Agriculture at HSBC for addressing the meeting and HSBC Bank for sponsoring the event.
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