Politics

Farming Minister Victoria Prentis has told the NFU she is ‘thinking long and hard’ about establishing a Trade and Standards Commission, just two weeks after publicly rejecting the idea at Cereals.

Exports Minister Graham Stuart and Farming Minister Victoria Prentis explain how they plan to boost overseas sales of UK food and drink.

The fight for a Commission to explore ways to protect food production standards in trade policy is continuing in the House of Lords, with a new Agriculture Bill amendment tabled to force the Government’s hand.

Defra and the Department for International Trade (DIT) have launched a ‘bounce back’ plan to help farmers hit by the coronavirus boost overseas sales.

While the world is captured by the ravages of Covid 19, the practice of a former political spin doctor to use a ‘crisis to bury bad news’ is as alive as ever.

Defra non-executive director Ben Goldsmith has called for ‘rewilding’ to be renamed ‘wilder farming’ in order to reassure farmers they are central to the movement.

A massive 80 per cent of rural businesses are expecting their profits to fall in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the latest Rural Sentiment Survey from Knight Frank.

Trade Ministers are trying to build bridges with farmers, but without legal guarantees to protect our standards, their efforts will not be enough, says Mark Bridgeman, president of the CLA.

Many fear nature restoration represents a threat to farming communities in the uplands, but nothing could be further from the truth. ‘Wilder farming’ is a better way to describe the changes needed than ‘rewilding’, says Defra non-executive director Ben Goldsmith.

In February, a key Government adviser was telling Ministers UK food production is not critically important. Let’s hope the pandemic has shown our trade negotiators the opposite is true, says Neil Farmer, an arable and sheep farmer from the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border.