Stop whinging, farmers told

A provocative address by Gareth Edwards-Jones, professor of agriculture and land use at University of Wales Bangor, rocked the conference.

He told farmers to stop whinging, accept decoupling of subsidies and learn to understand customers.

Wales should have only one farming union and far fewer rural organisations spending available funds, he added.

“We live in logo land with too many organisations with fragmented responsibility for the rural economy,” he said.

“Bring organisations together.

It will upset people, but it is the only answer.”

He criticised farmers for not getting to know their customers, and suggested the NFU had a serious public relations problem.