RSPB chief executive Beccy Speight: 'Give farmers a fair deal and the support they need'

                                       

Beccy Speight - peace pipe

FARMERS and the RSPB have long regarded each other with suspicion, but the latter's chief executive, Beccy Speight, believes the time has now come to bury the hatchet.

In the autumn edition of the RSPB Magazine, published this month, she writes: "Farmers need the certainty that the necessary policies and financial support are in place if they are to produce  healthy food while helping to reverse wildlife declines.

"Ultimately we all want our countryside to be a vibrant and healthy place with robust local economies where farmers get a fair deal and the support they need.

"If we can achieve this, then Nature will return across the UK, expand and grow into the place it once was.

"Without the help of farmers and the land that they manage, the task of bringing back nature will be nigh impossible."                                           

Yellowhammer - one of many species being lost on farmland

The Wryneck says: The National Farmers' Union will be delighted with this piece of commentary from Ms Speight. Perhaps she will now consider writing something similarly appreciative  on behalf of the agrochemical  industry whose insecticides, herbicides and fungicides have wreaked such havoc on farmland wildlife since the 1950s and earlier. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see if the chief executive of the NFU might  now choose to write an article pleading farmers to give wildlife "a fair deal and the support it needs".  Somehow that seems unlikely.