The Oxford Real Farming Conference - January 2018
It is easy to live in an echo chamber in farming; a space where you only ever hear views of agreement or opinions close enough to your own that they are hard to disagree with. So when ponding which conference to attend I settled on the alternative option; the one I knew my father would disapprove of. But he, like very many farmers understands the importance of a ‘green Brexit’ and how feeding 65 million people in this country has contributed to the environmental damage we now need to put right. My initial impressions of the Oxford Real Farming Conference? On first day we, the conventional farmers of the world were called ‘the bad guys’ and ‘poisoners of the earth’. There were strong calls from the conference floor to label food produced using pesticides & inorganic fertilisers rather than labelling organic produce. One particular speaker suggested a black tractor and a skull and cross bones symbol. I felt really rather uncomfortable and ...