Farmers to get more say in policy-making

Peter Kendall was re-elected as the union’s president to serve a fourth term at the top of the organisation, having been voted unanimously into the post.

Elsewhere, Meurig Raymond was re-elected as deputy president, also for a fourth term while Adam Quinney is the NFU’s new vice president.

The election saw Driffield farmer Paul Temple lose his battle to be re-elected to the upper echelons of the union.

The new office holder team will serve the NFU for two years.

NFU president Peter Kendall said: “First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Gwyn Jones for his enormous amount of work and dedication over the last two years as vice president, following six years of really constructive work as dairy board chairman.

“I would like to congratulate Adam on his new role and welcome him to the NFU office holder team. There is no doubt that he will relish the opportunity to tackle the challenges that come with such an important position.

“For me, it is an enormous privilege to be re-elected as president with such resounding support from council.

“No-one at our conference can have failed to have grasped the size of the challenge facing us over the next decade as we keep the need for increasing food production at the top of the agenda.

“That’s what I’m committed to doing and I thank the council for giving me that opportunity.”

The elections capped off a memorable conference, in which it was announced that farmers would be given an increased role in policy formation, with an exchange programme between staff at Defra and the NFU set to begin in April. The move comes as a result of the Government’s task force investigation into how red tape could be cut for farmers.

As well as the sharing of information, Defra has committed to simplified environmental rules and a pilot to share data between Government departments to reduce the amount of forms farmers must complete.

The measures were outlined by Defra secretary Caroline Spelman during her speech to the conference and, while the NFU’s leaders broadly backed the proposals, it insisted that it needed the Government to introduce them in a timely fashion.

Elsewhere, Peter Kendall lent his backing to the Government’s plans to revamp the planning system, saying it would allow farmers and rural communities to have greater say on development.

However, he also brought up the repeated delays from the Government on the issue of a Groceries Code Adjudicator, saying that if the real story behind how food producers and farmers was brought to light it would “really shock consumers” and said that failure to legislate on the matter would be “anti-business”.

[email protected]