Funding

Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s spending review included a rise in the National Living Wage to £8.91 per hour

Ministers from the devolved nations have called for assurances that all EU funding for the countryside will be fully replaced, after it emerged Treasury proposals would see rural budgets slashed by more than £455m.

The UK’s internal market will not be distorted if Scottish farmers keep their direct payments after Brexit, Defra Secretary George Eustice has said.

If the past few months have taught us anything, it’s that the safe, reliable supply of sustainable food is important to the public. Welsh Government would be wise to recognise food production as a public good, says NFU Cymru president John Davies.

Food defence ought to be number one on the Government’s priority list during this pandemic, but the new Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution does not even include agri-food, says Tim Lang, professor of food policy at City, University of London.

There is no comparison to the UK’s food system in 2020 and the 1800s Corn Laws, and free traders are doing us all a disservice by denying this fact, says arable farmer and NFU Sugar Board member Tom Clarke.

The Scottish Government has laid out its new regulations for farming ahead of the end of the EU Transition period on December 31.

Scottish farmers look set to keep some form of direct payment beyond 2024, after Rural Economy Secretary Fergus Ewing mounted a passionate defence of income support at the virtual AgriScot conference.

Ministers have finally given Parliament more power to scrutinise trade deals, but the Parliament which will be scrutinising is the same Tory-majority one which has voted time and again not to protect our standards. I am not popping the champagne cork just yet, says Liberal Democrat MP Tim Farron.

If readers of Farmers Guardian were to look at their favourite landscapes they would no doubt see vistas shaped by agriculture, with farmers at their heart.