Opinion: Girls on top at Oxford Farming Conference

This year’s Oxford Farming Conference offered the first ever all-female line up in the opening political session.

Farming Today’s Charlotte Smith chaired the platform with Liz Truss and Kerry McCarthy presenting their individual visions for British agriculture.

The Oxford Union conference debate pertinently posed the question: “Is agriculture an equal opportunity employer?” A timely discussion since many men are beginning to wonder whether there will be a role for them in the farming of the future.

See also: Read more from the Oxford Farming Conference

Matthew is the managing director of Naylor Flowers Ltd, a South Lincolnshire business which grows cut flowers and potatoes for supermarkets. Matthew is a Nuffield Scholar

The female tone was certainly more pragmatic and less confrontational than usual but the body language on the stage showed that the two MPs weren’t necessarily from the same sisterhood.

They looked more like two rival sister-in-laws playing Trivial Pursuit at an awkward family Christmas.

Liz Truss has the bossy and authorative air of a head girl reading out the school rules.

She regularly employed a chopping action with her hand to show us, in true Jackie Chan style, that she isn’t a lady to be messed with.

“The female tone was certainly more pragmatic and less confrontational than usual but the body language on the stage showed that the two MPs weren’t necessarily from the same sisterhood”

Kerry McCarthy is more like the bright rebel from behind the bike sheds.

She was more open but a little nervous.

She looked as though she would rather be letting her hair down at the Landworkers’ Alliance ceilidh at the Real Oxford Farming Conference over the road.

As ever, the MPs’ presentations were a large spoonful of statistics sugar-coated with praise and congratulation. The medicine was so subtle that the audience could hardly taste it.

See also: Read more from Farmers Weekly’s columnists

“We need to sharpen our competitiveness,” said the secretary of state with barely detectable menace as she declared her free-market idealism.

“I’m not against regulation,” said the shadow minister innocently. “Progress can mean looking to the past,” she enthused. Older delegates dreamt wistfully of Massey Ferguson 135s while the younger ones considered more pesticide withdrawals.

Inevitably the audience challenged Ms McCarthy on her veganism but she said that it wouldn’t affect her backing for meat producers.

Whether the vegetable industry can count upon the support of the carnivorous Ms Truss in the future, however, remains to be seen.