I'm posting this on behalf of Johann who is out and about today. He's in the middle of writing something on Hilary Benn who will shortly have done two years in the job. We're trying to give a fair assessment of what he has achieved and what he hasn't.

Johann has sent me this to explain what he's doing:

Vegetarian Hilary Benn has hardly been the farmers' friend since becoming DEFRA Secretary two years ago. "Judge me on what I do, not what I eat," he implored. But his role has not come easily.

Mr Benn seems preoccupied with overseas development and climate change - witness recent trips to Africa and Antarctica - rather than securing a future for UK farmers. Many decisions made during his time have proved unpopular.

Livestock farmers will remember him for his refusal to sanction a badger cull to combat bovine TB.

Growers will remember his unilateral attempts to reintroduce set-aside - despite its abolition by Brussels - a time of global food shortages.

Mr Benn would argue that he makes decisions for the greater good, rather than to satisfy farmers.

But all too often he has failed to persuade the Treasury and his European counterparts to support his arguments.

We give our verdict in this Friday's Farmers Weekly. But what do you think? Click here to have your say.

If any of you want to give Mr Benn an end of year report here's your chance. I suspect you'll find plenty of negatives, but it would be nice to counter that with some positives (if there are any). Feel free to give an overall mark our of 10!

I think you've almost answered your own question here Isabel!

I question where his loyalties lie, they certainly don't seem to lie with British agriculture. Undoubtedly he has one of the worst jobs in the cabinet and, like Becket and Milliband before him, can't wait to get freed from the millstone that is DEFRA. But when we look back at this era and think of the name Benn we in the ag industry will inevitably remember someone who pandered to the whims of the single issue groups and refused to listen to the industry.

Inaction on TB and trying to force the reintroduction of set aside, further reducing our ability to produce home grown food, will be his legacy. His oposition to EID in sheep, a sensible objection though it is, will pale into insignificance compared to the blunders he has presided over and his apparent refusal to take balanced view of farming.

Becket will be remembered for ignorance and ineptitude of monlithic preportions. Milliband will be the guy who tried to get to grips with an industry, and as soon as he showed any sort of aptitude, was moved up the line.

But I will remember one phrase in particular "I want british farmers to produce as much food as they can, no if's, no but's." and then he went on to give a list of "if's" and "but's"!!!!! Although, apart from a dubiously appointed accountant, he does seem to have come out of the expenses fiasco largly unscathed, so perhaps he isn't as bad as some of them?!?!?!

What did anybody expect from a vegeterian in a labour goverment who at best have little interest in encouraging farming, at worst,see farming as a major inconveniance.And now he has Jim Fitzpatrick in charge of farming,another vegeterian ! you could not make it up

I agree with cornish b. Hilary has done nothing good that I can think of, for me as a farmer, i'ts all been envoiroment this wildlife that as T.B gets out of control, and the milk industry gets bled to death. Its enough to make me get all political!

Welcome to the forum Fordson4000.

Do others agree that being a vegetarian is a real problem? I'm kind of relaxed about one minister being veggie so long as they don't actively use their position to campaign against the livestock sector. I don't think Benn has done that, although his refusal to sanction a badger cull etc has of course had an impact. But I think having two vegetarian ministers is more of a problem.

Being a veggie should not be an issue if he did is job properly and had an interest in it. If you study his body language when confronted by anyone he folds his arms and supports his head with one hand indicating he couldn't care a d*** what is being said to him. The sooner we get someone that understands rural life and knows that cows,sheep,pigs and poultry are cared for better than any of their keepers,  at least would be a start.

Isabel,

       The main reason why Benn has not got involved in anything to do with Agriculture is because he has no comprehension regarding the subject therefore like his counterparts in other Departments they shy away from anything to do with the subject for fear of being found out.This is why they play these abstract games and encourage every idiot going to make much of a subject that its self is abstract and without real meaning then it is very difficult for another man to stand in front of him and say "You Sir are a Fraud as your Father was and you do this Country no Service".

cloud9:

If you study his body language when confronted by anyone he folds his arms and supports his head with one hand indicating he couldn't care a d***

Well spotted cloud9. Benn is usually polite but this is a result of his background as a wealthy noble. and a product of his assumptions that any position arrived at by his powers of reasoning are, ergo, both intellectually and morally superior to those of plebian countrymen.

He is at his most comfortable when with his own kind (aren'r we all) or behind a lectern.

So has Hilary done anything good for the farmers of England especially?I'm glad we have Elin Jones in wales , she appears to be on our side at least, and is willing to try and do something about TB and seems to me like she has a good relationship with the farming unions,can any of this be said about Hilary ?

In a way, I feel a bit sorry for Benn, or anyone put in charge at DEFRA.  The Labour party has never had, in the last twelve years, any clear strategic policy for farming and food, but when it was MAFF (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food) the name of the department virtually defined the job description of the incumbent minister.  Of course there would have been some friction between the different elements of the food chain, but by and large, your job would have been to promote and manage each of those elements to achieve for Britain, the most efficient, thriving and vibrant food industry in the world.

The creation of DEFRA, brought into the equation such aspects as wildlife conservation; maintaining the prettiness of our tourist attraction countryside; public access to private property; the welfare of tweetie birds; climate change etc. etc..  We all know the conflicts this has brought and the perception seems to be that Benn has a natural inclination to favour the environmental lobby over farming.  This is probably exacerbated by the fact that Labour does seem to have some environmental policies, but still has no policies for agriculture.

It seems that Labour, and therefore Benn, assume that anything relevant to agriculture will be decided at an EU level.  Well in a lot of respects that's true, but it seems that when some new or updated Directive is proposed, the UK agriculture team do not have sufficient detailed knowledge to effectively argue our case with the EU bureaucrats.  DEFRA are pretty good at consultation when it comes to putting directives into UK law and under Benn seem to have been better at not gold-plating the legislation. BUT at this stage it is too late and we end up with ever more inappropriate and irrelevant regulation which is detrimental to UK agriculture. (By the way, this is not just a failing of DEFRA, but also applies to many other government departments too.).

So, my verdict?  Shows signs of promise but too easily influenced by inappropriate friends.  Could do better.

His first real achievement was to get the sea defences rebuilt in front of his family seat, Stansgate House on the Blackwater Estuary, whilst other local areas were not to be so maintained. The cost of this exercise knocks that of duck houses and moat cleaning into a cocked hat. Doesn't appear on his expenses list.

For the article, we're looking at 10 policy issues Benn has had a hand in. They are:

Food security
Bovine TB
Set-aside replacement
Food labelling
Disease outbreaks (foot-and-mouth, bluetongue)
Hill farming
Europe (CAP healthcheck, EID, pesticides ban)
Rural Payments Agency
Responsibility & Cost-sharing
Research and Development

For each policy area (above), we're giving him a mark out of 10. Then we're adding together all the marks to give him an overall mark out of 100.

The trick in doing this is proving to make all the marks an accurate assessment of how Benn has done, so it is not a complete slag-off but neither is it overly generous.

I'd be interested to know what sort of marks FWi users would give him on the above topics.

 I guess you want answers not a treatise so here goes: (10 is high)

5   Food security
0   Bovine TB
5   Set-aside replacement
6   Food labelling
1   Diseases outbreaks (foot-and-mouth, bluetongue)
2   Hill farming
0   Europe (CAP healthcheck, EID, pesticides ban)
1  Rural Payments Agency
1  Responsibility & Cost-sharing
2  Research and Development

I do fear however that my natural generosity has got the better of me.

23 out of a possible 100.

Is that a pass under this government's educational standards?

Interesting scores Peter -

Adding up your points gives Benn a tally of 23 out of a possible 100.

Everyone's going to score Benn differently but I think most farming people rate him nearer the bottom of the class than the top.

The two that stand out for me are food labelling (6 seems high - what has he done other than talk?) and hill farming (2 seems low - he did bow to pressure over the Uplands ELS scheme).

This Thursday I'll reveal the FW scores we decide upon (ie after we go to press but before the magazine comes out). In the meantime, more contributions are welcome.

I re-read Hilary B's 2008 Oxford Farming Conference speech (couldn't sleep!) to remind myself of his honeymoon period, had a little think, researched the departments achievements (didn't take long) and then had a go at putting my scores on the board...

3   Food security -
0   Bovine TB -
3   Set-aside replacement -
3   Food labelling
1   Diseases outbreaks (foot-and-mouth, bluetongue)
2   Hill farming
0   Europe (CAP healthcheck, EID, pesticides ban)
0  Rural Payments Agency
2  Responsibility & Cost-sharing
0  Research and Development

I enjoyed Jacobus's contribution and agree with him that it probably would not have mattered who was in the post, the assessment would not have been very favourable. 

This may be a complete diversion - but I find it quite interesting. I've just used the contents of Hilary Benn's speeches during the food and farming debate in the House of commons last week to create a word cloud. The size of the words shown in the picture below shows the number of times he used them as he spoke. It's meant to give you a visual representation of what his main subjects were:

Is it my imagination or is the word environment bigger than agriculture?

Produced using http://www.wordle.net/

 As always Isabel it depends on the audience, here is the same cloud exercise on our erstwhile hero's Oxford Farming Conference 2009 speech.

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/964509/Hilary_Benn_Oxford_Farming_Conference_Speech_2009

Produced with http://www.wordle.net

and he was at it again in 2008!

http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/964539/Hilary_Benn_Oxford_Farming_Conference_speech_2008

produced with http://wordle.net

That's very clever Isabel

 the word 'vaccine' looks bigger than the word 'badgers'.

Not a surprise, eh Tom?

Johann Tasker:

For the article, we're looking at 10 policy issues Benn has had a hand in

It is very difficult to put Benn in any perspective. He is a babyboomer bungler, this generation is defined by this present Parliament of talking a talk but not walking a walk. They have never been hungry, or gone short, though they will tell you different. I speech with authority as I was born about 4 months later than Hils. I have a certain sympathy for the task of defra minister as it was Beckett who undertook a cherry picking mission for herself in the creation of the ministry. She was more interested in flying round the world and talk about climate change, and do nothing. When it came to the opportunity to shaft landowners with the RPA she did, and how.

Toynbee wrote yesterday, more generally than about Benn, but it is a good summary of this Government and can be pointed at the administrations view to all things "At the time of the crash, Brown and Darling had a choice to become the representatives of that voice but they ducked the radical moment. Instead they are defenders of the status quo, halfhearted in political and electoral reform, timid apologists for the City. What more will it take to make politics respond to popular anger?"

The problem for agriculture in Britain at present it is dominated by policy and no understanding of what it is for or about. We are obsessed with "Why are we paying out all this money to agriculture? and what should we be using the land for anyway?

Benn has no understanding of agricultural husbandry coming from a 3 or 4th generation of politicians, how establishment is that? I don't mind that he is a politician, it is his failure to understand his brief in regard to agriculture, history will damn him, but Beckett even more.

Now marks out of ten - I am ill equiped in certain areas of this analysis but that will not stop me.

Food security 4 ( He did become aware of this but thinks this is about food on shelves and has nothing to do with farming)
Bovine TB 3 (he has tried but failed to connect to farmers, again talk and no action)
Set-aside replacement  3 (verging on cock-up here, listening to the museum curators in the NGO concerned with landscape, not reality of natural processes, or codification of landownership) 
Food labeling 3 (talk no action, scared of supermarkets and other government departments)
Disease outbreaks (foot-and-mouth, bluetongue) 4 (has tried here, but again not talking to farmers just the vested interest)
Hill farming 4 (has tried but doesn't understand social problems of these areas, to far from Peckham)
Europe (CAP healthcheck, EID, pesticides ban) 3 ( Doesn't work with Europe, tells them like Crash to listen to us, we 're right because we are British and you are wrong because you are European, Benn fails to grasp that the CAP is a social policy, not an economic policy)
Rural Payments Agency 1 ( a laughing stock across the globe of monumental incompetence, that only Stalin and Mao surpassed.
Responsibility & Cost-sharing 3 (Responsibility is something he shines away from and cost-sharing is for you)
Research and Development -10 (This is the area that has caused the agricultural sector to go down the pan and demonstrates conclusively that they have no view to the future through total failure of investment)

Why nothing on the failure to rein in administrative expenses of his ministry, fines and the continued over arching pedantry regulation enforcement. Why nothing on a failure to make the various agencies like NE, EA work together more? Why nothing about the failure to provide a lead to motive farmers and other rural dwellers with a positive mental attitude. Nice bloke, nice manners but that doesn't cut it at this level.

Total 18

I will give him credit for at least holding a debate in the commons the first one since 2002 on farming.

 Hmmmm.

 I have come up with my own wordle which I think is more accurate than the others so far, even though it isn't based on any of Benn's speeches...

 You can see it here.