YP Comment: Harness power of rural areas. Devolution matters to farming

However Jake Berry did intimate that he was still willing to listen respectfully to proposals for a Greater Yorkshire settlement involving the West, North and East Ridings.

Yet, in attempting to read the runes of the Minister’s many mixed messages, the Sheffield city-region deal will go ahead and he would prefer Leeds, at the very least, to follow a similar leadership model.

Nevertheless, on the day that the 159th Great Yorkshire Show opens at Harrogate, Mr Berry has little appreciation of the value of the rural economy – or how city-based settlements will exempt countryside communities from decision-making processes as the farming and food sector comes to terms with Brexit.

This is borne out by the National Farmers Union’s new Pride & Provenance campaign in which 57 agri-food companies with a presence in Yorkshire are joining forces to press for their industry to be taken more seriously by national leaders. The numbers are eye-watering; these firms enjoy a collective turnover in excess of £2.5bn a year and employ 23,000 people.

Does Mr Berry, or any of his colleagues, realise this? The Yorkshire Post, for one, remains to be convinced, even more so after Defra only confirmed to the Yorkshire Agricultural Society yesterday afternoon after much confusion that Michael Gove, the newly-appointed Environment Secretary, intends to grace the Great Yorkshire Show with his presence.

Rural affairs is just one of the many quandaries that will need to be settled in Yorkshire’s devolution debate, a process which has become so tortuous and convoluted that it has become this county’s equivalent of Brexit.

Yet, with rival regions now making the most of devolved powers, and the Government intent on doing business with those areas that do get their acts together, Yorkshire can’t afford to prevaricate for much longer – it’s six months since top executives wrote an open letter to this newspaper calling for an end to the impasse.

The question is whether any leader is prepared make the first move and offer a concession? For, without compromise, the deadlock will remain and every city, town and parish in this county will lose out as a result.

Show of support

FOR farming families, the three-day Great Yorkshire Show is the culmination of a lifetime’s work. Modest people, it’s also the one occasion where they can showcase the agriculture industry, and its excellence, to a wider audience.

They deserve to. Food and farming is, in many respects, the lifeblood of this county. It’s also one of this region’s greatest success stories thanks, in no small part, to a succession of campaigns that have raised awareness about the provenance of locally-sourced produce.

For this reason the whole county should be so grateful that it hosts a truly national event like this each year – there’s no finer advertisement of the unstinting work undertaken by all those working tirelessly to not just sustain the rural economy, and old traditions passed down the generations, but ensure that Yorkshire’s countryside maintains its unrivalled beauty for others to enjoy. And while Brexit is creating understandable uncertainty, this county is home to the finest farmers in the land and a show of support this week will give them the encouragement that they need to sustain them in the years to come.

Ultimate gift of life

EVEN though advances in modern medicine can both great ethical dilemmas, as evidenced by the ongoing case involving baby Charlie Gard, it is truly humbling that 50,000 people are alive today thanks to transplant surgery. Operations that were fraught with risks in their infancy are almost routine now because of the world-class skills of surgical teams at hospitals across the country.

However it is a sobering thought that many more desperately ill patients could have received the gift of life if a greater proportion of the population signed up to the NHS Organ Donor Register. Though a record 23.6 million people do now carry a donor card, there’s a case to be made for all adults joining the scheme automatically unless they make a conscious decision, as is their prerogative, to opt out for personal reasons. With hundreds of individuals on transplant waiting lists passing away each year before a donor becomes available, it’s a debate that should, at the very least, be encouraged.