Some meetings attract a different class of welly
A HAPPY New Year to you all – and well done for being organised enough to get out and buy today’s paper.
Now, while making an effort to be better organised should be high on my New Year’s resolution list, I know it will never happen.
But this deficiency means I always have great admiration for the people who can be prepared enough to get away and start the new year at some of the big farming conferences which take place at this time of year.
The biggest is the Oxford Farming Conference – which has been on the go for many years and kicks the year off with a range of top-level speakers.
This symposium tends to be looked upon as the big “establishment” do, and attracts not only professors, consultants and advisers but a wide range of politicians, including the ministers from the UK Government and usually those from the devolved administrations as well.
So together with a load of high-falutin’ ideas and opinions, you also get pretty heavyweight discussions on how farm policy should be developing.
It’s not a do for the fainthearted and many farmers feel it’s not really for your average chap in wellies.
As often seems to happen in the farming world, the response to this has been the establishment of another conference, in competition.
The Oxford Real Farming Conference takes place in the same city, at the same time. However, it tends to concentrate on more practical aspects of farming and attracts a different type of speaker and audience.
But while the original conference has been criticised for toeing the establishment line, the “real” conference has, in turn, been accused of being a bit dippy hippy as it concentrates on sustainable agricultural practices, the environment and issues such as organic production methods.
One thing the two conferences highlight is the way in which the industry seems to be polarising, with big corporate-style farms at one end and smaller hobby and even subsistence farms at the other.
While there may be enough for an entire conference to explain how this came about, it’s something for the politicians and policymakers to remember as they draw up their speeches for these events.
And perhaps they should make a resolution not to forget those family farms in the middle, as they draw up their future policies.