Dr. Elaine McGoff:

It is absolutely critical that we engage with farmers. We need two approaches. We need a bottom-up approach, so we absolutely have to engage farmers, but we also need strong and robust regulation coming from the top. We cannot get where we need to get to without both of those. Farmers have proven to be very willing to put matters in place. They are jumping through the hoops that they are being asked jump through. However, the problem is that they are not the right hoops and will not get us where we need to get to. The problem is that agricultural policy to date has been focused on maintaining business as usual in the model that we already have in place. We need to step back and consider whether it is the right model. Looking at what is happening with the Ukraine situation now, where we have serious problems getting enough fertiliser and importing fodder, it exposes how vulnerable our agricultural model is to shocks in international trade routes. This leaves our farmers very vulnerable and in a very insecure situation. We would like to see a change in approach to a much more diverse agricultural model, where farmers are supported to farm in all sorts of different ways and grow different types of crops and grow food for human consumption. That very much will need the farmers at the table. It will need numerous parties at the table to figure out how we get to where we need to get to. It cannot just be a top-down or bottom-up approach as we need Government supports. We would like to see everybody sit down at the table to honestly assess the situation - we are lacking a lot of honesty at the moment – and say this is where we need to go, identify the roadblocks and figure out how to get past them. Without doing that, we will constantly tinker around the edges and not get to grips with this.