Janet Hughes DEFRA Missing in action?

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
That was very kind of you, thank you :) I'm much better now and I'll be back here a few times a week as normal from now on.

I wouldn't like anyone to worry - I wasn't seriously ill or anything but Covid did take me out of action for a few weeks; I then had a holiday and then came back in a pre-election period, when I'm not allowed to do as much public communications. So it's been one of those periods where you have one thing after another I'm afraid and it's taken me a little while to catch up after all of that. But I'm back on top now and looking forward to keeping in touch with you all as normal! :)
It was nice to meet your fellow colleagues at the Pig & Poultry Fair on Wednesday. You sort of know people having done Zoom meetings but nothing beats meeting face to face in my book

Glad to see you back Janet
 
It was nice to meet your fellow colleagues at the Pig & Poultry Fair on Wednesday. You sort of know people having done Zoom meetings but nothing beats meeting face to face in my book

Glad to see you back Janet
I couldn't agree more about face to face - there's no substitute for that in my book either. Really glad to hear you bumped into my colleagues, we're out and about more and more these days, it's such an important part of our work to talk to farmers face to face, answer questions, hear your views and concerns and talk things through.

Very much looking forward to the summer ag show season - we'll be at 25 of shows over the summer, between us (as well as various action mart, market and farm visits), and I'll be at quite a few myself so hope to see a lot of you there!
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
I couldn't agree more about face to face - there's no substitute for that in my book either. Really glad to hear you bumped into my colleagues, we're out and about more and more these days, it's such an important part of our work to talk to farmers face to face, answer questions, hear your views and concerns and talk things through.

Very much looking forward to the summer ag show season - we'll be at 25 of shows over the summer, between us (as well as various action mart, market and farm visits), and I'll be at quite a few myself so hope to see a lot of you there!
I did the hour long survey re DEFRA engagement too.

The one thing I think we would really appreciate after some calls for evidence and onfarm visits is FEEDBACK when decisions are ultimately made , please. Many of these consultations may take 8-10 hours online or several Zoom meetings / farm visits. I realise sometimes you are constrained in what the Executive can feed back but you can always give a Minister my mobile number if it gets sticky
 
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Our Civil Servants don't have a brain cell to share. The only major business in UK that with computerisation never cut staff just produced more paper.
Partly due to the corruption at both top civil servants and politicians giving ICL/Fujitsu the job of writing all programmes other than DVLA. IBM stopped quoting. 1 Very expensive when you know you are not getting it before you start. WHY? 2 Any US company employee guilty of even soft bribery gets to share a cell in Rykers with a 25st guy called Maralyn.
They are lucky I would be looking to get rid of 50% of them.
Choice in the Health service would be return to front line duties with retraining on same pay or leave with your pension stopped at time of exit not made up for future years.
The war on the uncivil service has been coming its just a shame it is being run by that wonk, blow job Jonnie.
 

Huno

Member
Arable Farmer
If the SFI pilot and initial roll out and delays that have wasted so much taxpayers money are to go by then i would happily weed out those civil servants in DEFRA who have done nothing useful or helpful so far...especially the Natural England quango that has messed SFI up royally and made it discriminatory against good farmers...
Get the job done soon i say..
🤑
 

Still Farming

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
South Wales UK
If the SFI pilot and initial roll out and delays that have wasted so much taxpayers money are to go by then i would happily weed out those civil servants in DEFRA who have done nothing useful or helpful so far...especially the Natural England quango that has messed SFI up royally and made it discriminatory against good farmers...
Get the job done soon i say..
🤑
Be understaffed to administer, next most probably?
 

Huno

Member
Arable Farmer
Has anyone noticed that everytime you engage with DEFRA on SFI,LNR and LR you are engaging with a different person at DEFRA based on email addresses... is it any suprise nothing gets done properly when they dont even talk to each other!! Stakeholder engagement needs to start within their organisation before they waste our farming time...grrrr
 

Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
Has anyone noticed that everytime you engage with DEFRA on SFI,LNR and LR you are engaging with a different person at DEFRA based on email addresses... is it any suprise nothing gets done properly when they dont even talk to each other!! Stakeholder engagement needs to start within their organisation before they waste our farming time...grrrr
Why do you keep moaning about elms or the SFI?

It's voluntary which means no-one is forcing anyone into anything against their will.
 

Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
This is the problem with benefit culture, we can't farm without subsidies because we have ended up relying on them.

How can it be right that the future of the farming industry depends on subsidies?
 

Huno

Member
Arable Farmer
Why do you keep moaning about elms or the SFI?

It's voluntary which means no-one is forcing anyone into anything against their will.
Its not a moan..its an observation that a whitehall department is failing to deliver... i have no problem with the direction of travel as that cant be undone easily..
I have a real grip with the lack of implementation so that we can plan the future of our businesses..
That is not a moan.
Its a stategic,operational and tactical demand...
 

Huno

Member
Arable Farmer
In layman's terms... they need to sort their (DEFRA) sh☆t out and quickly... the threat of a few redundancies might just deliver that
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,292
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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