A FFA spokesperson said a huge number of tractors very successfully lined the streets at the 90th year Oxford Farming Conference and sounded their horns at the appropriate time when certain speakers were on the platform.
The spokesperson added: “At this year’s conference DEFRA Secretary Emma Reynolds and a myriad of other speakers will support the Government’s favourite buzzwords, eg growing resilience, plan and invest for the future, become more efficient – all of this will be linked back to the recent Baroness Batters report commissioned by DEFRA delivering 155-pages of Government fudge that always avoids any indication of delivering family farmers across the UK a minimum of the true cost of production plus a margin inflation linked for their produce and ending saying there is no silver bullet – which is just not true!
"Then to add insult to injury in response to Minette Batters’ Farm Profitability Review, the Government announced yet another quango to act on the review, consisting of representation from large corporate food retailers, the banks and one mention of farm organisation representation.”
NI spokesperson William Taylor, FFA stated: “This is yet another example of putting the fox in charge of the hen house on farm gate prices!”
Mr Taylor went on to say that the protest at Oxford was two-fold, firstly, on the Inheritance Tax issue, which has moved at Christmas as everyone knows to a higher threshold of £2.5m, however, is still totally inadequate on two fronts.
He added:”Firstly, this threshold is far too low and not indexed linked and needs to go - as indeed does inheritance tax entirely for the sake of family farmers across the UK and other businesses. Secondly, the protest is highlighting the disastrous farm gate prices currently being delivered for the vast majority of food leaving family farms across the UK.”
Taylor concluded: “Everyone should consider that today these farmers are needing in many cases a 100% increase in the prices they are receiving, therefore, they are haemorrhaging money unsustainably! Thus the number leaving the industry is increasing. All this while issues are playing out on the high seas and across the world between the USA, UK and Russia and our food self sufficiency should war break out stands at 48%! We have to ask – does this resemble the position of a responsible Government?
"The purpose of the Oxford protest is to twofold: to demand the end of the inheritance tax, bearing in mind that this Westminster Government, before the Christmas partial relief, has been responsible for far too many farmers committing suicide in the meantime to save their farms for the next generation; secondly, to demand a UK wide Farm Welfare Bill which is a direct copy of the NI Farm Welfare Bill, currently with the Agriculture Committee at Stormont and if enacted in Westminster would deliver family farmers across the UK a minimum of the true cost of production plus a margin inflation linked for their produce as the only way forward.”
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Part of the protest at the Oxford Farming Conference Photo: freelance
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A line-up of tractors at the Oxford Farming Conference Photo: freelance
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The scene in Oxford outside the annual Farming Conference Photo: freelance