NEWS
ONE YEAR ON
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The Rural Policy Group (RPG) came to the fore in 2020 as the world shifted dramatically in response to the changes forced on it by the coronavirus crisis. The group was founded in 2019 to support and promote the farming community and the wider rural economy, but it came of age last year, launching the Rural Economic Development (RED) talks that helped harness opinion and share ideas as the Covid-19 pandemic caused worldwide social and economic disruption and Brexit loomed. RPG chairman Mark Lumsdon-Taylor told South East Farmer that it was a conversation with Sarah Calcutt, Executive Chair of the National Fruit Show, that sparked the idea of a series of webinars designed to provide rural business owners with the information, business support and hope they needed to weather the storm. “At that point we could not have known how quickly it would grow,” he said. No-one could. In the first year, more than 1,000 businesses from 25 countries worldwide attended the talks in total. Here, Mark tells the story: “Since the first RED Talk took place in April 2020, lessons from the pandemic and lessons from Brexit have reshaped how many people view the world. Farmers have always known that their industry is a subset of the environment; now the rest of the economy is waking up to the fact that we cannot make a healthy profit without healthy people and a healthy ecosystem. “RPG evolved to lead this systems-thinking
approach from a rural-first perspective. The rural economy is the engine of sustainable growth, but it needs support to achieve change, and so we integrated economic social governance (ESG) and health and social care into our vision for a greener, more equitable economy led by a respected and profitable food and farming industry. “Together with our guest speakers, drawn from politics, science, business, medicine, policy and academia, we have tackled topics such as agritech with Neil Parrish, Chair of the EFRA Select Committee, food security with Luke Pollard, Shadow Environment Minister, and mental health with Sir Norman Lamb, formerly both a health and business minister. In July we turn our focus to the electrification of farm vehicles as part of the journey to Net Zero. “The talks are getting rural business heard by policymakers in Parliament and change-makers in industry. We also lobby hard to raise the importance of rural communities and the rural economy in government policy-making; rural life has too long been underfunded, undervalued and underestimated. “Last year we submitted a well-received report to government highlighting the concerns of the farming community. It addressed issues around food security, profit share within the supply chain, consumer behaviours around food, technological innovation and the types of government support the industry needs. “What it all boils down to, however, is food
> Mark Lumsdon-Taylor pricing, and this became one of our central pillars. How we fix the food system so it is profitable for all and provides the country with an affordable nutritious diet is something we will continue to research, debate and lobby for. “None of this would have been possible without our network of partners and members of the advisory council, who give their time and expertise enthusiastically in support of our shared aims: a thriving, well-respected rural economy driving a sustainable, equitable UK plc.” Mark Lumsdon-Taylor is a senior corporate consultant for MHA MacIntyre Hudson & the seconded chief financial officer for a leading fresh produce food manufacturer. He chairs the Rural Policy Group in addition to a number of non-executive appointments in London and the South East.
JUST A LITTLE SCRATCH…
Farmers in East Sussex will be asked to vaccinate badgers as part of a major, large-scale badger vaccination trial. DEFRA announced at the end of May that the government had awarded £2.27m of funding to enable farmers to administer the vaccinations over an area of the South Downs spanning 250sq. km. The government says the results of the five-year trial will help inform how it rolls out future vaccination schemes at scale across England, as part of its plans to phase out badger culls. The licensing of new intensive badger culls, which DEFRA says have effectively helped reduce bovine tuberculosis rates (bTB) by half in certain areas, will end after 2022, while existing cull licences could be cut short after two years in cases where this is supported by scientific evidence. Trials of a bTB cattle vaccine are expected to begin this summer, with the aim of enabling a vaccine to be rolled out by 2025. In the last year, more than 27,000 cattle in England were slaughtered to tackle the disease.
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