Thirty Years of Progress Initiative To Boost British Farming Confidence

June, 2004 - A major industry initiative has been launched this summer to give the British farming industry the confidence it needs to make the most of the completely new era of EU agricultural policy ahead.

Celebrating the tremendous progress made by British farming since joining the European community, the 30 Years of Progress Initiative is being run jointly by Farmers Guardian and Arable Farming with Roundup, which itself turns 30 this year.

The initiative is centred on an extended series of articles in both magazines charting the progress made by individual farmers since the 'Seventies with the opportunity to win a state-of-the-art Simba Horsch cultivator drill package for 2005. A special cash-prize photo-competition is also being run every other week in Farmers Guardian’s new Eastern Counties edition. And Roundup distributors across the country are involved in a nationwide scratch card promotion offering a range of attractive prizes.

Launching the initiative, Farmers Guardian editor, Liz Falkingham said: "Despite the huge uncertainty over the new decoupled EU world, we are certain our industry can face it with immense confidence. After all, 30 years in the European Community have certainly taught us how to make the best of moving political goalposts in both Brussels and Westminster, not to mention consumer pressures and disease crises.

"Dairymen have, for instance, successfully coped with milk quotas for 20 years, despite the fact they were set well below then current production levels. Cereal growers have weathered the stubble burning ban despite the cultivation and rotation problems it has presented. The livestock industry has survived both BSE and the worse case of FMD since records began. And the entire arable sector has adapted itself to the vagaries of variable annual set aside.

"At the same time, farmers across the country have successfully transformed their production systems to take advantage of rapid technological change, widely fluctuating commodity markets and an increasingly variable climate, not to mention ever-growing regulatory and public pressures."

"Faced with all the uncertainty and worry of the future, it’s easy to forget just how far we have come since the ‘Seventies," stressed Roundup marketing manager, Sion Price. "Yet when we take the time to examine how much our industry has achieved in the current farming generation we can have no doubt whatsoever about its ability to thrive in the years ahead.

"We have joined forces with Farmers Guardian and Arable Farming to celebrate the changes our industry has made in this time, the opportunities it has seized and the challenges it has overcome. Looking back at our real and lasting achievements with pride will, we believe, help us all to look forward to what the future holds with purpose, confidence and, above all, self-belief."