Well I am afraid this is quite a large blog entry, because on Tuesday I was given the opportunity to go to the NFU conference at the Birmingham Hilton Metropole by the Mid-Staffs NFU group. I was so grateful to be able to go as I had a fantastic day and learnt so much, particularly in the way of food security. Unfortunately, I do have to say that this came a week to late for me as food security was the subject of my assignment last week. Nevertheless, I can now conclude that the topics I discussed in my assignment were correct!
We arrived at the hotel at around 9.30am and Dad booked into his room, which was very smart I have to say! The conference itself began at 10.15am and was opene
d by Peter Kendall, NFU President. With the theme of the conference being 'Farming at the heart of the economy', he explained that as food prices are at their highest it was of most importance for agriculture to be top of the agenda. He believed that farming is at the centre of our social and political stability here in the UK, but with increasing fuel and feed costs, decreasing GDP and climate change, the matter of food inflation is a real concern. The fact that the population is rising at an increasing rate brings challenging times for farmers, but Mr Kendall did not think that self sufficiency was the answer because we are too dependant on trade. However, he did make the suggestion of striping down barriers to increase food security. He concluded by saying that this was the hardest conference speech he had ever had to make and that he felt there was a balance of positives such as the new government and the negatives such as the CAP reform.
And so onto the first speaker of the day; the DEFRA's Secretary of State, Caroline Spelman MP. And what a hard job she has, rather her than me I must say! Here are some bits I picked out of her speech; she informed us that agriculture was to be on the G20 agenda for the first time 
this year, they were investing £12.6 million into research to decrease greenhouse gases and lastly, she believed that in order for agriculture to become competitive, we need more young people to see it as a career. She also thanked farmers for their patience on the issue of bovine TB but insisted that they needed time in order to make the right decision. Her concluding statement went something like this; "We are your partners, your livelihood is in our hands, we want to help you thrive and fight your corner on the CAP reform."
After some extremely challenging questions for the Secretary of State to deal with we took a break for lunch. Paul Conway from Cargill was the next speaker after lunch. He explained what was going on in the global agricultural market, his views on the future of the market and the impacts on farmers. His suggestions to increase food security included; more infrastructure investment and increased investment in R&D to increase yields.
The business session continued with Graham Bartlett from E·on. The title of his speech was Development in the energy industry'. He believed that instead of using 'greener' energy, we needed to use 'cleaner and better' energy. Professor Ian Crute, chief scientist of the AHDB, followed by explaining the Foresight Project. This project looked into the future of the food industry and he thought that t
his was needed due to the failure of the food system. He quoted that there were 1 billion people in the world who were hungry and a further 1 billion that were malnourished. Two key messages that he picked out of the report were the need for a radical re-design of the global food system and the need to raise the political profile of food.
Next was probably the best speech of the day, which came from Dennis Turner, who was the chief economist for HSBC. The title of his speech was 'The UK economy in 2011-12' which could have been the most boring half an hour of the day. But in fact, I have to say that he was hilarious and I learnt so much! It was an excellent way of talking about a complex topic and I feel that I now have a good understanding of the global economic situation.
For me, the final part of the day was to attend the livestock breakout session. And I won't go into too much detail, because if you are still reading this blog then that is an achievement in itself! Speakers included; Phil Bicknell from the NFU, John Mercer the chief livestock advisor for the NFU, Lord Rooker from FSA and Alistair Mackintosh, NFU's national livestock chairman. Key features of this breakout session were; the opportunities that could arise from tighter global meat supplies and from closely working with the service sector, the development of Ladies in Beef and the NFU beef strategy, and the concerns surrounding the percentage of the retail price for beef going back to farmers. A particular quote that I picked out from Mr Mackintosh was "we need an ex-farm price rise asap or we will have a tight supply, and we won't get it back."
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