Look out, Minister!

The appointment of Michael Gove as Defra Secretary seems to have caught everyone, including him, on the hop. here, we offer him some advice for taking on a pivotal department (Town & Country, page 42, and Agromenes, page 49).

Buy cheap suits

Slurry, lamb afterbirth and kissing puppies are all part of the job, as are eggs, tomatoes and, at one farming conference, an eclair.

Eat a Gloucester Old Spot sausage and have a pint of Rutland Bitter One of Defra’s many fiddly jobs is to sort out protected food names outside the eu.

Buy wellies, plain ones

Owen Paterson, who had rural credentials, was unfairly pilloried for leaving his in the car boot on a visit to the flooded Somerset Levels and others have looked daft visiting Bse-hit farms in shiny white ones.

Check research

There are lies, damned lies and environmental statistics, which will be interpreted in myriad ways. Common sense and instinct can work better.

Demand better IT

The failure of the Rural Payments Agency was unnecessary.

Foresee that social media will distill a plan The online reaction to a proposal to sell off just 15% of the public forest led to an undignified U-turn.

Don’t anthropomorphise animals

People are (nearly always) more important: bats can survive being moved out of churches, newts shouldn’t hold up housing, ‘Basil Brush’ eats lapwing chicks and no one will forget the badgers that ‘moved the goalposts’.

Read former GWCT policy director Steve Tapper’s paper, A Question of Balance It explains why healthy biodiversity doesn’t happen by accident.

Attend The Game Fair

Plus go beating and fishing and visit a hunt kennels. Often, field sportsmen have the clearest insight into the countryside.

Attend the Great Yorkshire Show

To hear some straight talking from farmers (and well done for having already appeared at the Three Counties).

Come home when disaster strikes

Dictating press releases from the French Riviera doesn’t look good when the flood waters are rising at home.

Prepare for illogicality

Culling badgers will elicit protest; culling cattle or deer will not.

Create a meaningful farm payment system

That’s a big one—tasks need to benefit a wider community, but still be achievable.

Know the difference

Between a buzzard and a hen harrier, a weasel and a stoat and a Suffolk Punch and a herefordshire Perry.

Don’t be daunted

You’re only responsible for the soil, the air, the trees, the rivers, the sea (and the fish), the price of wheat and the economic prospects of Cumbrian farmers—among other things.