NFU and Tenant Farmers Association looking for ways to work together

The NFU has held talks with the Tenant Farmers Association to explore areas where the two organisations could work more closely together to protect the interests of tenant farmers.

NFU deputy president Meurig Raymond attended the meeting with TFA chairman Reg Haydon, TFA vice-chairman Greg Bliss and TFA chief executive George Dunn.

Discussion centred on the Single Payment Scheme, agricultural tenancies and bovine TB.

“Following on from the close work that has gone on between the NFU and the TFA on Single Payment Scheme the next step was to investigate how we could build on this,” said Mr Raymond.

“The meeting provided a useful opportunity to explore the issues facing the tenanted sector both in the short term and in the longer term. 

“I look forward to working more closely with the TFA in the future on areas where our policies are aligned.”

Mr Dunn agreed that the meeting had been positive and said that the TFA had a much better working relationship with the new NFU presidential team than it had experienced before.

“We are trying to make sure that we don’t duplicate what we are doing to make sure members of the NFU and TFA get value for money from their membership,” he said.

“In my opinion, we would continue to tend to take the lead on tenant farming issues and the NFU would take the lead on the wider farming issues.”