Tories could suffer rural backlash over faming policies - Yorkshire Post Letters

I ALMOST choked on my cornflakes when I read the letter in your excellent newspaper from Farming Minister Victoria Prentis.

She seemed to admit that the directive issued by her department regarding the spreading of animal waste on crops was a grave and nonsensical mistake.

It prohibited the use of farmyard manure during certain times of the year and it could only be used after preparing an expensive report from an agronomist and on certain crops. It drove many livestock farmers to despair, and I fear even worse scenarios.

The directive was called ‘Farming rules for water’ and was no doubt, dreamed up in some cosy Whitehall office by bureaucrats whose only knowledge of food production was limited to loading the trolley up in the fresh food aisles at the local supermarket.

It is stunning that highly productive agricultural enterprises with many cows, pigs and chickens were left with nowhere to spread this invaluable plant food. Of course Putin, if he heard of this nonsense, will be delighted because reducing British agricultural production means that we will remain dependent on wheat from the Russian Steppes and Russian gas which we use to produce our nitrogenous fertilisers.

As a life-long Tory, the most amazing thing to me about this Orwellian nightmare is that this has been planned by and introduced by a Conservative Government, who will, I am sad to say, suffer a severe backlash come voting time from the rural community and many of these Ministers will be down at the job exchange. Maybe then muck-spreading will not seem to be so hazardous after all.

From: Mike Baldwin, Raven Road, Nether Edge, Sheffield.

Farming Minister Victoria Prentis’ desperate attempt to suggest the Government cares about farmers is not borne out by the facts.

The recent Tory-led Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report ‘Labour shortages in the food and farming sector’ portrays a scathing picture of the Government’s contempt for this sector.

The post-Brexit immigration policy, brought in during the pandemic, resulted in an estimated 500,000 vacancies in the sector, which meant that tonnes of crops had to be left to rot in the fields and more than 35,000 pigs had to be culled. The report is unsparing regarding the ineptitude of the Government which did little about labour shortages despite being warned well in advance.