‘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.
FG News Blog 