There’s been enough ‘divide and rule’ in farming
It would seem that when it comes to the age-old feud between organic and conventional farming, there is the smell of rapprochement in the air.
It was good to hear Soil Association chief executive Helen Browning, who Oliver Walston once called “the High-Priestess of the organic church”, ending her sermon to the organisation’s conference by calling for more knowledge transfer between the two disciplines.
If organic farming can give me tips as to how to wean me off my dependence on my eye-wateringly expensive ammonium nitrate, then I’m all ears but I might need something more imaginative than just clover fallows and cow muck.
On the other hand will the organic movement drop their slavish objection to GM and herbicides? One has one’s doubts.
But let’s hope this new mutuality blossoms and we don’t become like the British and German soldiers who, having played football on the western front on Christmas day 1916, duly trooped back to their respective trenches to restart hostilities.
The problem I have with avoiding fights with the organic movement is that they tend to start the name calling. Let me give you a piece of evidence in the shapely blonde form of Donna Air. As a quick aside, my favourite Donna Air moment is when she was interviewing the brother-and-sisters Irish pop group, The Corrs, and she asked them in complete seriousness how they all first met up.
But Donna’s wisdom doesn’t stop there. She would also appear to be an expert on good nutrition and, hence, she has been used by the organic movement to make public pronouncements about the wonders of organic food. Sure enough she can be found in the media telling parents that she feeds her children organic because with organic you can be sure “it has no nasties like steroids, hormones or pesticides”.
Now, call me Mr Over-Sensitive if you must, but as father of three I really do object to the notion that because I feed my kids on the produce from non-organic farms then I am recklessly trying to poison them with “nasties”. It’s stupid to make the suggestion and Donna Air should stick to something she knows about.
If by way of retaliation I decided to get down among the scaremongers, I could employ a food scientist to brief the Daily Mail about the higher campylobacter risk in organic chicken. But I wouldn’t do it and why? Because trying to out-trump people by playing the “food scare” card ends up cheapening yourself.
And then there is Lord Melchett. I’ve met his Lordship a few times and he’s a nice affable chap, but I really do wish he would get out of his habit of going in front of parliamentary committees and urging them to bring in a pesticide tax. Would I go in front of the same committees and urge them to make Lord Melchett’s life more difficult by bringing in tax organic barley? Er, no because I wouldn’t be so spiteful to a fellow farmer.
But I’m not one to hold a grudge and, leaving aside the cruel remarks about my manhood by ‘Banjo Boy’ Naylor in his December column, I’m prepared to forgive and forget. The point is: Will the organic movement be able to break the habit of negative campaigning? Can they stop trying to demonise farmers like me with their “organic good, conventional bad” mantra?
I’m sure they can but let’s see the behaviour change first. At the end of the day we are all farmers and have far more in common than we have differences. It’s time to stop pigeon holing ourselves as adversaries.
Guy Smith comes from a mixed family farm on the north-east Essex coast. The farm is officially recognised as the driest spot in the British Isles. Situated on the coast close to Clacton-on-Sea, the business is well diversified with a golf course, shop, fishing lakes and airstrip.
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