I know I bang on a lot about the need for greater production in years to come and more research to help us achieve it. So when I support what might look at first glance to be a contradictory initiative - the set-aside replacement called the Campaign for the Farmed Environment (CFE) some might think I am being inconsistent.
I beg to differ. I have counted myself an environmentalist for many years, to the extent that we were putting down environmental headlands and leaving hedges to grow through the summer, only trimming them once the berries had all been eaten by birds, long before there were grants available to encourage the practice.
In my view it is perfectly possible and probably more profitable (at least on our farm it is) to allocate unproductive areas to wildlife. Yield monitors on combines have since proved the point that under trees, in wet patches that are difficult to drain and so on, it usually costs more to cultivate and plant crops than are repaid by yield. So why not leave such areas for the birds?
Like I say, we've been doing it for years, long before set-aside had crossed the Atlantic to the EU. What is more, and I did not fully expect it, the practice has meant we have not needed to spray insecticides on cereals for about twenty years. The beetles that live in the hedge and bank bottoms do it for us saving quite a lot of cash and effort.
So I'm in favour of the CFE initiative and want it to succeed. The alternative if farmers don't play ball will be more unwelcome civil servant inspired regulation and we surely don't want that. I've always preferred to do things voluntarily rather than be pushed and this is no exception. That's why I helped start LEAF eighteen years ago. Actually if every farmer had joined we wouldn't have needed the CFE initiative. But thats another story - and at least LEAF is in there helping to make CFE happen.