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.

To my homies in the West Country

How to connect with a young audience:

• Embrace rap music
• Cash in on the X Factor

That’s the formula being used by Yeo Valley – purveyors of fine organic produce – in a bid to get their product noticed.

And so they’ve come up with these here bad-ass farmers

And with lines such as  ‘Yo I’m rolling in my Massey on a summer’s day, Chugging cold milk while I’m bailing hay’ (their spelling, not mine) I can only hope that the advert (which airs on October 9) is less cringe worthy than it sounds.

Read the full lyrics here – sorry, we haven’t got the audio yet so you’ll have to make up the tune.

It’s a noble effort. But the same, I remember, was said about John Barnes, Shaquille O’Neal and of course, Jedward, when they all tried their hands at the ancient art form that is rap music.

It remains to be seen how these guys will get on. Will the audience be cringing, scratching their heads, or frantically searching iTunes to find where they can purchase this piece of West-side gold?

One thing is for sure though, its bound to get noticed and YeoValley will stick in the minds of the X Factor audience – at least until the end of the commercial break and the next hopeful bashes out a tuneless version of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing.