Warning – not verbatim – no direct quotes unless confirmed with Rob Yorke’s recording – ask me! Hay Festival May 2018 Minette Batters, NFU president Welcome to Hay, I am Rob Yorke. I am a rural surveyor, writer and commentator. I have done this for 6 years and I propose a change in discussions. Normally, I set out the conversation, lay out the rules of engagement, but this year there are no rules. We have only got one hour in order to thrash out a trade deal for securing affordable groceries, keep all our wonderful wildlife intact and enhance our diverse landscape. But most of all, we have waited 110 years for the National Farmers Union to elect its first female leader and I am delighted to welcome Minette Batters to the stage.

RY: It has been quite an arrival at NFU Headquarters how do you feel about it?

MB: Can I just say that it has been quite a stressful journey here and I just dumped my car and ran so apologies for that. I guess as a farmer you spend all your life working hard and all the female farmers out there don’t want to be treated differently. When I was appointed by the NFU it was a proud moment for me and the big success for women will be when this is not newsworthy. Luckily all this has died down and it’s not about being the first woman because all industries have always had men and women equally involved and there are women in the background of many a farming business. It is a surreal and hugely important time and a huge responsibility because effectively I am the voice for 50,000 farmers. The NFU has always been the leading voice for British agriculture so the pressure is on.

RY: Did you come from a farming background? Did your family have farms? Give us a bit of insight of your life before the NFU.

3.43 MB: I grew up on the family farm with a father who was pretty anti about women getting into farming. So we did not have any succession tenancy and it was always very clear to my brother and I that we would have to make our own way in the world. My father was anti my going to agricultural college purely because he did not see a career in it for me. I guess there is an element of the more you are told you cannot have something, the more determined you are to have it. I never lost sight of wanting to farm and did all the calf rearing before going to school. I had quite a big career with horses and was assistant trainer to David Elsworth and rode 30 point to point winners. But it was always farming that I wanted to do so in the mid 90’s my parents were on a very fragile yearly lease and I approached the landlords and said that we had two derelict cottages in the farmyard and if we did them up and you let us

have them rent free for 25 years will you let us take on the farm? To cut a very long story short, they agreed so we started farming with two derelict cottages, derelict farm buildings, 20 suckling cows and that was pretty much it. Every single person we knew said ‘do not do it’. I had by then a good career in catering, I trained as a chef. I started farming in my own right in 1998.

5.32 RY: Now I want to fast forward and get Brexit out of the way. Like many others, the NFU did recommend that Britain stays in but many farmers voted out. Does the NFU know why they voted out and was this relevant [to all sectors] uplands, lowlands etc.?

MB: We took the remain position because the electoral rules said that if you want to engage at all, you have to take a position. We could not take the out position because at that time, there was not one single policy paper in DEFRA for what out would look like. So we could not take this position but we wanted to engage so our Council which is our sovereign body, took a vote and decided that in the interests of our membership we took a remain position. For the founding principles of the EU and for access to the Single Market because it is a hugely important market. Farmers were no different to everybody else, farmers were divided, families were divided and we were just the same as everyone else. People felt strongly about it on both sides but I very much feel that the vote has been done and it is no good looking back and we have to look forwards now.

7.15 RY: I just want to ask the audience how many farmers there are in the room. About 60? How many have heard of the Government’s Consultation Paper ‘Health and Harmony, Food, Farming and the Environment’? Basically, it is the Governments’ big consultation paper on where farming goes after we leave the EU. 44,000 people responded to it but did farmers understand and engage with it? Or did they leave it to the NFU to respond on their behalf?

8.20 MB: If you are a member of the NFU we will do all that sort of stuff and we will always struggle in the numbering game that lobbyists can be seen to be working under these days. We did respond in detail with a 100 page response and we consulted widely with our members around the country. I did a recorded message to every member and we chucked everything at trying to get farmers to respond because the way Michael Gove operates it is very much a numbers game and he wanted 100,000 responses so it was really important that farmers do speak up for farming. It was a reasonable response on behalf of farmers. I spoke to a lot of farmers about Health and Harmony – what is that?

9.38 RY: I see a change of direction with that H word, Health. The Government is trying to produce more food due to the rising population and is linking it to how we eat. I think Mr Gove is trying to take us in a different way, by wasting less food, watching our diet and reducing the strain on the NHS.

10.24 MB: Michael Gove is a big hitting politician; a very ambitious politician and he has got a great brief to effectively rebrand himself. So yes, health is a hugely important part and it is effectively a social and environmental vision and those are hugely important parts of agriculture. The paper does not really mention food at all and we are farmers and that is what we do and we care for the environment as well. So, I think that was a glaring oversight and he has publicly said it was a mistake and that he should have mentioned food more. Apparently he designed the title and I pointed out to him that if he Googles Health and Harmony, he will find a beauty salon in Essex! He was very clear that he did not name the paper after that.

11.35 RY: An adviser I spoke to is helping the Government take food towards health by changing how we eat and the whole food market will start to change. It won’t happen overnight…….OK, I am just going to roll this into some of the confused semantics around subsidy, farm support and farm grants. Does this also lose the connection with the people who are trying to engage with food and around farming?

12.12 MB: Support is there in most countries across the world in order to keep food affordable. Food has never been cheaper, currently 10% of our annual income whereas in the 70’s it was 25% - 30%. We are the third cheapest country for food in the world. So if the Government is serious about this and improving diets, we need to make some quite radical changes in how we are trading as farmers and making sure we are trading fairly and that the farm gate is receiving a fair return is paramount to stepping back from change in support. I think that at the moment, public money for public goods is fine but you can’t just shut your eyes and say that the market can run itself. The market is a savage beast and we are driven by global pricing and government after government we have had a long term cheap food policy so there are some big things which need to be sorted out if that is genuinely the way forward. It is going to be really hard work for the government to deliver on that.

RY: I wouldn’t say we have the third cheapest food in the world.

13.45 MB: We have, I have the statistics America is cheaper, I have a paper which shows this.

RY: We have some roving mikes for the audience to ask questions during our conversation. If you want to raise a pithy, pertinent question, raise your hand. There’s one hand over here.

14.40 Audience: A talk I went to earlier today, mentioned that in Nigeria, 70% of income goes towards food. Do you think that the amount Britain pay for food needs to be increased and would farmers receive support from the public if they wanted to increase their income?

15.08 MB: I think this is a real challenge. Farmers often say to me that people do not know how tough life is for them. I always respond by asking them if they know how hard life is for other people as I believe some 50% of people are really challenged on the amount of money they have to buy food. For a family of 4, the average spend would be around £80 per week and we do have a massive austerity crisis going on, Food Banks have never been needed as much as they are now, we have a lot of poverty, we still have children going to bed hungry and that is not right. I feel strongly that nobody should be unable to afford British food. We want to be able to produce food for all incomes and that has been a success story but not if you are trading fairly and the farmer is receiving a below cost of production price, that is unsustainable in the long term. But there is a lot the Government can do about legislating the supply chain, making sure that we are trading fairly. The role of the ?? adjudicator, she deals with the top ten retailers and doesn’t have anything to do with the function of the supply chain. You hear politicians say ‘well they will have to pay more for their food’ but it just is not as simple as that. I think this is a really serious issue and the Government has stepped back from the food system for the last 30 years and the retailers have run the food system and we have a unique buying market in this country which is a massive challenge for farmers and the supply chain. It is incredibly complex but I think the point you highlight around Nigeria and people say ‘let’s have Brexit as food will be cheaper’ how immoral is that?

17.37 RY: That is what politicians will be arguing over and what it will come down to is Michael Gove versus Liam Fox.

17.55 Audience: Minette, you seem to think that Health and Harmony is not a very good title but actually, it is a bloody good title. I want to challenge the NFU as I think you have presided over the destruction of our farming industry

over the last 50 years because you have been in the pockets of the global industrial giants who supply fertilisers and pharmaceuticals they are the people who are dictating policy and actually, cheap food isn’t really cheap food because the true cost of accounting food would take account of the destruction of our soil and rainforests and everything else.

18.43 RY: A tough question, as you’ve not been there for long, but a good question to the NFU……18.51 MB: It’s a good question? I am a small, tenant farmer, I am a small self-made business. This myth that the NFU is in bed with Monsanto, the big fertiliser companies is an absolute categorical myth. We represent all sizes of farmers and a fact that we don’t broadcast that often is that the average size business is 200 acres. Our average member is not some arable baron that is farming 20,000 hectares, we have 1,000 people who declare over 1,000 acres. So we represent predominately small, farming businesses. We are constantly fighting with fertiliser companies to get a better deal for farmers, so it is a complete and utter myth and I promise you that I will be back on my farm in Wiltshire farming quite happily than doing this job if I felt that was the case. Successive Governments have driven the cheap food policy that we have today and we have some pretty unbearable inefficiencies that other people are aware of but many people in this room won’t be. We have delivered in the supply chain. Health and Harmony is a fine title and it is a social and environmental vision and if you don’t have productive, thriving agriculture at the heart of it, I promise you it will fail. I have said exactly that to Michael Gove. We have to have profitable farming that underpins Health and Harmony and we might just have a green Brexit and if you don’t have profitable farming underpinning it, it will go nowhere.

21.04 RY: DEFRA have announced more regulations about improving air quality. This has huge ramifications for farmers and any land users – especially organic farmers as it is all about manure (covering the manure heap). Does the new regulation drive out short-term cost for farmers but reduce the long term cost to the environment? Are you going to embrace this new regulation or bat it back saying it just increases costs?

21.54 MB: It is vital that we farm responsibly, it is vital that fulfil our duty of care to the environment. I had a long chat with Neil Parrish who is leading on this and he said that the big focus is on urban areas because that is where we have a major challenge. Agriculture is constantly being reinvesting in the way it can farm and in a more environmentally sensitive way. We have said for a long

time that we have to produce more but all the time we have to impact less. So, yes, I think we take that responsibility very seriously Rob and will continue to do so. When out of the EU potentially we can have different funding streams, we can do things differently to make sure that farming is fulfilling its obligation. But I think that there is often a myth around productivity and you talked about covering manure, it is all about smarter farming. The smarter we can farm and the more we can innovate, the less we will impact and yes, it is something we embrace and climate change as well and we must be at the forefront of delivering on climate change.

22.55 RY: Some presidents of the NFU have said, probably not too loudly, that we need to get away from subsidies as they prevent that innovation you are talking about. Everyone realises that subsidies have been holding back innovation……

23.35 MB: We have been part of the Common Agricultural Policy so under that basis we have had to follow the rules, we have been paid what we have been paid, we have not liked a lot of it – I don’t know any farmers who have embraced the CAP as it has gone down many a wrong alley. But fundamentally Europe was starving when we first started the CAP and Europe is far from starving now. We were talking about food prices earlier and the CAP has been a phenomenal success story. So, you have to look at subsidies in the round, now the Treasury has loathed direct payment for many years and they are absolutely ambitious about a new system and that is why we talked about three vital corner stones around volatility measures productivity measures and environmental delivery. I think it is just going to be different and we have got to take time to how we transition into that. For example, the last round of Foot and Mouth we had. Subsidies are fundamentally there for market failure, to protect consumers and to protect farmers. It is there to ensure that when everything else goes wrong, farmers do stay in business and you don’t have a welfare crisis for both a farming family and livestock. If you close your access to foreign markets, you then flood your own markets. 95% of our lamb exports go to the European Union. When we flooded our own market due to the last round of Foot and Mouth, it crashed and even the top 25% of sheep producers in this country, only stayed in business because they had that direct support. Now, there are a lot of completely false comparisons with New Zealand saying that they stepped back from subsidy and it transformed the sector, yes, a lot of people then went out with a shotgun and finished it all off. The New Zealand Government was totally focussed on making sure that agriculture had a thriving export market and if you look at it now, you will see that agriculture is around 1/3 of their economic value. Yet, in this country, the Government as

not even yet recognised the economic value and the potential which is one of our key lines of engagement with them. But we talked about the cheapest food, for 20 years we have not seen any price movements so Government has got a big job to do on the supply chain and we have to focus on volatility measures productivity measures and environmental delivery. You can’t just pick out the environment and say that is going to do it because it won’t for neither food or the environment.

RY: Any quick questions on what we have been talking about? Anyone from New Zealand?26.45 Audience: Just a counter to the anti-subsidy feeling. Agricultural subsidies are one of the most progressive forms of taxation that exist because the amount you spend on food is directly related to your income. So if you are one of the poorest 10% in this country, you are not spending 10% of your income on food. Therefore, if you are in the top 10% it is one of the very few ways in which money can be taken from the wealthiest to the poorest and still be seen as common good. Is Brexit taking away the public’s appetite for subsidies?

27.50 MB: Look…on News Night a while ago Evan Davies had a panel of 20 and he was hoping to have this toxic debate on subsidies and he challenged me on it and to this random panel, he asked if they thought that agriculture should be supported and I was surprised when every single one of them put their hand up and said ‘yes’. No farmer I know wants to be supported and if they could make a profitable living out of what they produce, they would be delighted to take all support away. But ultimately when you are in a unique sector like agriculture you cannot push those costs up the chain, there has to be a mechanism in there to make sure that we can cope. You know, this winter added another £4,000 as we had to keep the cattle inside and that is just the beef business let alone the dairy guys. So, subsidies is complex and to put it into context, we talk about £3b this would run central Governments and its departments for 2 ½ days. So I think it has been a phenomenally good deal because if you look at where food prices were and where they are now. Let’s face it, we can have it different now and its got to first of all stack up for the UK tax band and is seen as a good investment for farmers so let’s be realistic about it.

29.45 RY: Subsidies are just to keep the farmers going, it’s not about not supporting the farmers, they are going to be supported to produce other things, and they are going to be paid for stuff that the market is not paying for

at the moment. Some of the upland areas, woodlands, water, wildlife, none of that is being supported financially and that is where I think the money is going to go towards rather than just the bottom line. Is that what you are referring to?

Audience: Yes, I see the money going to supermarket, grouse moors, not towards food supplies.

30.36 MB: You have a valid point there because something we have said all the time under European Policy is that any support must go to the active farmer, the person taking the risk. There has always been opposition from active farmers to theoretical slipper farmers who are just sitting there as landowners and not doing any of the work. We don’t feel that they should have support as if you are taking the business risk that is where the support should go. The Health and Harmony paper is a step back from that as there is no mention of the active farmer in there whatsoever. So that is why you have got to keep the link with food and the environment you shouldn’t separate them, they should be a joint venture going forward.

31.22 RY: An upland farmer said to me the other day, ‘Rob, if I am paid to farm a bog, I will farm a bog’. So the point is, some of them might be ready to produce other goods which we as a society want. Are you, at the NFU ready to help farmers to produce other outputs?

31.54 MB: Farmers make business decisions, we have seen a third of farmers diversify to renewable energy, we have seen under ELS and HLS environmental schemes, 75% of farmers actively engage with environmental schemes. So, there will be people who choose to farm just the environment but fundamentally we are the National Farmers Union and food production sits at the heart of everything we do. That said, we have an environmental policy team, we believe passionately in both that we can produce food and that we can care for the environment and enhance it. So I don’t think it is an either or, but farmers run businesses and will take business decisions as to whether they want to be paid. Personally, whether I believe Government would say we are going to pay for ever and a day for your bog, I think that would be a wrong move actually, would you trust a Government to say this is not going to become political and not think, we have a problem with the NHS, never mind your bog, we will just let it go.

33.12 RY: Is it just a case of diversifying because those farmers who can produce food better and efficiently and other farmers produce other goods so you are actually diversifying? Whereas when I interviewed Michael Gove he was very much into wanting more mixed farms. So how difficult would it be for say, an arable farmer to say, ‘OK so that is where Government policy is going to go, I can do mixed farming. Is it that easy to change?

33.55 MB: Look….I think it is widely known that mixed farming, rotation is hugely beneficial and those are choices that people make. But there are challenges, with livestock you need a qualified stockman to be part of that. If you are running an arable business, many farmers are running that on their own now because with current technology they can. So it is not easy and when Michael Gove talks about it he makes it all sound simple but it is hugely complex and we are seeing more mixed farm businesses coming back but it’s a challenge and when you don’t know who your trading partner is going to be why would you be making those decisions now? The level of uncertainty is making farmers think I just want to know what the base line looks like before making radical changes. Getting into livestock farming would be a huge investment for an arable farmer and they want to know who they will be trading with.

RY: Any questions around this particular subject?

35.05 Audience: It’s great hearing you say that we can farm and produce great food but does it not challenge to the breaking point something the NFU is very strong on which is food security and feeding the nation? How can we farm more productively and environmentally, feed everybody and do it economically?

35.55 RY: Food security means the access to nutritious and affordable food, that is the strict definition of food security, is that what you meant?

Audience: Yes, food for everyone, one of the cornerstones is that everyone should have and afford British food. That is the difficulty, doing that and doing the environmental things and that is where the NFU have got to have a long hard look at – where they stand

36.30 MB: Yes, this is not about growing pineapples and bananas. The NFU realise that we should still be sourcing out of the global food larder and people will always want to buy strawberries at Christmas so this is not about a take-over and saying we should not be importing food. But there is a very serious

conversation to be had around our levels of self-sufficiency which have been decreasing over the last 2 decades from where we were at 80% self-sufficient to just below 60% now. The point being is that when we can produce it here we should be producing it and there is another really difficult, ethical challenge that is it right for an island nation which is so densely populated to just export its conscious and standards. There is a good report done by the Royal Society that we are now decreasing our levels of self-sufficiency and offshoring our crop base and greenhouse gas emissions and is that the right thing to do? I have had some interesting conversations with the church on all of this who feel very strongly that countries in Africa do not have more challenges put on them, they have enough challenges feeding their own populations – many of them cannot feed. I think the UK has a duty to make sure that it does retain a level of self-sufficiency. Michael Gove after all is always referred to as the Secretary of State for the Environment and one of the big challenges we have, whether it is labour, trade, the largest manufacturing sector worth £112B to the UK economy has no department, has no Secretary of State. We have a Minister of Agriculture but food is downgraded in the eyes of Government and that should be very very different I think. As the producers of whole foods we should be at the heart of all of that and I don’t think that not having a Secretary of State for food and agriculture is a good thing. We can now have a bespoke environmental policy that really fits the UK rather than working around a devolved situation where they want different schemes but it can work around our landscape rather than 27 different others.

39.15 RY: On environmental, George Eustace the Farming Minister has said ‘Agri- environmental schemes will be a no brainer’. Can he get away with that when the WTO rules don’t allow farmers to make money on environmental work? At the moment they get paid to put the hedges in, rebuild walls but going into the future, can farmers be paid more to do that environmental work you are talking about?

39.50 MB: Potentially they can but the trouble with Brexit is that it is all so hugely complicated that trade is like doing a day job and for most people they will not get into the level of detail you need to understand how that question can be answered. WTO is not like Europe, WTO is where you file your complaints so for instance on the tariff quotas, we have been prepared to accept the restricted amounts that come in. For example, if we take New Zealand lamb, it comes in on a quota basis so that you can only bring so much in to the market place. We took that to the WTO in Geneva and the Americans and Australians said ‘no, no, we are not having any of that’ Now, if we are going to do what you suggest with agri-environment, we will need a number of

‘amber box’ payments. In order to get amber box payments we need to agree that with Europe and that is called ‘Aggregate Measure of Support’ (AMS) and we have to get that out of the European Union. We should be able to get it and there is no reason why we should not be able to get it but we don’t have it yet. Having amber box payments will be crucial on delivering agri-environmental but there are so many things which need to be done that it is not as easy as saying this is how it will work.

41.35 RY: We cannot decide on anything right now about farming and the media sometimes dumbs it down, pesticides, here’s one. ‘All insecticides are bee killers and that’s it’. Whereas we know that we need fungicides to stop wheat leaf rust and herbicides are vital to reduce other cultivations. Is there a reconciliation required in accepting the green revolution fed a lot of people in India but not everything worked, Rachel Carson had a point, and we now move into smarter way to wield those powerful agri-chems which we need?

42.15 MB: My biggest frustration with Brexit is that I do think from a farming point of view, from a food point of view, we started with solid foundations. You only need to step out there and view the landscape to recognise that it is far from broken and actually, I think that it all looks incredibly good. That’s not to say that there are not areas where things aren’t working as well as they should be and those things have to change and I get that. On the pesticide usage, on fertiliser usage, in the last 25 years, we have halved our use of pesticides and halved our use of fertilisers because we can work a far more targeted approach. So with your average tractor now, you don’t need a mechanic on your farm, you need a technician. I meet lots of farmers who say to me that they cannot drive their tractors anymore and my technician has to drive them as they are so highly computerised. We have been targeting our approach with precision farming and yes, we can do much more of that and this is the point that I make to all the green NGOs is that when we talk about productivity, they say ‘ well that is just the NFU, you just want to produce more’. Productivity is so misunderstood. It is about smarter farming, doing it better and impacting less. If you compare us to Germany, their apple production has access to double the pesticides we have access to so we are doing a good job in the UK. The media have a role to play in all of this because it is pretty scary what you hear sometimes. We have had Michael Gove himself talking about drenching with pesticides and that is absolutely not the case and he has actually apologised for saying that.

44.23 Audience: Speaking as a battered dairy farmer, what I find in this part of the world is that some of the most prosperous farmers are chicken farmers

and apple farmers, cider growers and none of those are greatly subsidised. How do you explain that?

44.52 MB: It is a good point and the horticulture sector has been incredibly efficient. I love going out to apple grower businesses and see what they have done but I do not think they would describe themselves as living in the land of milk and honey though. If you take strawberries as an example, we have not seen any price rises in the last 20 years. If your average berry grower’s wages are 75% of the business and you bring in lovely social regulations such as the national living wage which is great, but who’s going to pay for it? When we talk about mechanising things because we are not going to get anybody here to pick and pack our fruit, vegetables and flowers, who is going to pay for that mechanisation when you haven’t seen any price increases? Poultry is a sector that I think has really got it right and they are producing food for the entire market place and you can buy a Red Tractor, Farm Assured bird for £2.50. You can buy a corn fed, an RSPCA assured and a friend of mine bought an 18lb chicken the other day and said she felt she had to buy it. But poultry has got it right as it is producing a product for the market place and it is totally consumer led and consumer focussed. There are masses of opportunities to consolidate our routes to market in the red meat sector but they are not there at the moment and that can change. So I think there are lessons to be learnt from poultry farming but the horticulture sector is incredibly challenged and I think those efficiencies those growers have achieved have not been rewarded by the market and with no price rises in the last 20 years, that is not sustainable and I have seen so many growers go out of business on the back of that. So we have to do it differently and make sure that the true cost of production is recognised. For you as a dairy farmer, you know that some dairy farmers are on good contracts and some are on absolutely shocking contracts and that has to change and at least George Eustice is focussing and legislating to make sure that all dairy farmers have a good contract.

47.25 RY: We are very urbanised in the UK yet we are very attached to our rural roots and soil, is it overhyped soil? What about hydroponics, vertical farms, LED lighting, lettuce factories to take the pressure off the environment and bring food security closer to urban areas. Is that something you are helping farmers to engage with?

47.55 MB: Very much so, we have some fantastic businesses that are vertical farming, that are using LEDs and if you can bring the cost of LED lighting down, you will see it fly. It is still incredibly expensive but growers definitely see LED as transformative. But soil is absolutely A1 critical to every single farming

business. Whatever sector you are, the soil is fundamental to the success of your business.

48.30 RY: Could you use robotics more and reduce the need for farmers, have more technology and reduce farming’s impact on the soil?

MB: [This government wants to be the first developed nation to embrace AI and whether that is possible or not, who knows.] Robotics already have a big part to play and will continue to do so and in fact they will have a much bigger part to play as we will be picking our strawberries with a robot.

49.20 RY: I just want to talk about mental health which is often overlooked in farming but it is a tough business. People think that working outside is great fun but you can be isolated. Does the NFU recognise that some farmers want to be given a dignified exit out of the industry?

49.55 MB: You are absolutely right in saying that mental health is an issue and although we focus on policy all of the time, but my Vice President feels very passionately about tackling health and safety but also mental health and wellbeing. This is something we are focussing on in our council meetings and we are having a presentation on it. Farmers don’t talk about it, they will talk about the challenges to their livestock to their business but their health and wellbeing often goes unchecked and as you say, farming is often very lonely so I feel the NFU has a big role to play in both those areas. But helping people to leave, it is all about succession planning we want more young people to enter the industry, we don’t want that to be just about land ownership but at the moment they get there by default. Helping people to leave is all about encouraging those conversations and I know from my own experience with a father who absolutely could not talk about succession I know how challenging that is but ultimately we have to drive a culture change about how we help young people come in and how we help people retire and retire well and not feel that they have to keep farming because they cannot afford to leave the industry.

51.36 Audience: On a green note, in terms of poultry, does the NFU have an ethical view on the wellbeing of the chickens and turkeys in the sense that Free Range is better for them and is popular from a consumer’s point of view. Secondly, as this is a literature festival, were you inspired by Bathsheba Everdene from Far from the Madding Crowd?

52.20 MB: I haven’t got the time to answer the second part of the question. Something we have not covered this evening and there is an elephant crashing around in the room is our standards. Let’s talk about our standards, food safety, they are quite dull but this is critical. If you look at our poultry industry, when David Cameron decided to be a global leader in AMR, for years we have been taking antibiotic usage very seriously and no more so than in the poultry industry and they have managed to get their antibiotic usage down for broilers to 17mg per kilogram and it is still coming down. If you look at every flock that comes in and benchmark us against the United States, where it is 57mg per kilogram. They don’t clean out between flocks at all which is why they have to use more antibiotics and the birds are living in a totally different production system. This is also why the birds are chlorinated at the end. The science behind all of that is fine but they are totally different production. I think there is a big debate on whether we can allow consumers to drive welfare such as keeping a pig on a straw bed. Actually there are big challenges with keeping animals outside and in some cases they would be better off inside so it must be underpinned at every time by science and not ideology and emotion.

54.20 RY: That is true as one of my hens was eating slow worms so for animal welfare free range was good but not for conservation.

54.43 Audience: There has been a lot of talk about the Government, Michael Gove and George Eustice, how much engagement have you had with the Labour party and how much do you think they understand about farming?

54.55 MB: A lot of engagement with the Labour party, Sue Hayman is I think a breath of fresh air and she is launching this autumn a Food Manifesto. So when I talk about absence in the current Government about food and the importance of it, Labour are committing to a Food Manifesto and I am meeting with Sue again next week. As Shadow Secretary, she is committed but as for engaging with Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonald, the Labour party of today is very different to the Labour party previously and there is serious work to be done with engaging with the party bearing in mind that we could have an election in the not too distant future. It is important that we are actively engaged with all of them, the Lib Dems as well.

55.53 Audience: James Evans NFU Cymru. What can the NFU do to get more young people into our industry as they are the future of farming and will drive it forward?

56.13 MB: They have a huge role to play and NFU Cymru working with the Welsh Government has done a huge job to raise the profile. Scotland’s New Entrance Scheme has also done well. We do need to do is a government ambassador to drive this. We need the Government to work with us to provide workplace skills for ever and a day and it is so fragmented and it needs now to be joined up and I think Brexit offers a lot of opportunities to do it better because we are not hiding behind France or riding on Germany’s coat tails, we have got to knuckle down and do it ourselves and build a bigger, better Britain on the back of it.

57.18 RY: Thank you, I think we will have to leave it there as the lights are flashing and I don’t want people to leave before we have said - thank you to Minette.