Organic and conventional producers must pull together for UK farming

‘Yes, perhaps we have upset the conventional farming community by continually saying we were right and they were wrong.’

 It is one of the most surprising quotes in Farmers Guardian this week, most of all because it came from former Soil Association director Patrick Holden.

For too long, the Soil Association has worked on the premise that organic is good, while conventional farming is inferior in some way.

For its former director to say organic farmers should ‘not be out there thinking and talking of ourselves as organic farmers because that separates us from the rest of the farming community’ is such a massive change of direction, it beggars belief.

Having retired from the post, Mr Holden is free from having to toe the party line, but it is a line about which he was very clear as director.

His latest comments will not have gone unnoticed by his previous employer.

And neither should they. That there is room for all systems, organic and conventional, seems to have passed the Soil Association by ­ as did the fact all farmers would be far better to unite behind the banner of promoting British farm produce.

Even organic farmers sometimes felt uneasy about the divide and rule approach.

With so many challenges facing everyone in the industry ­ milk prices at crisis point, beef values dropping and feed prices escalating ­ has the Soil Association realised that ultimately, we all face the same issues; getting consumers to buy quality British produce and, even more importantly, persuading retailers to give us a fair price for it?

‘Sustainable’ production through ‘sustainable’ farming is something almost all farmers would identify with and aspire to do. Let¹s hope this change of direction is taken on board by the Soil Association¹s new director, Helen Browning.

Surely UK farming plc would be in a much stronger position to face all the issues coming our way ­ from whatever direction ­ if everyone pulled together?