Seven years ago, in August 2017, the headline of my first column for Farmers Weekly read “First and foremost, farming is about food”.

In the post-CAP world, I wrote it was “vital the core business of farming isn’t neglected in deference to ancillary concerns”, referring to post-Brexit worries over “food security” and a fear that it was losing ground to “beetle banks, skylark plots and bat boxes”.

I finished with a flourish: “farming doesn’t mean flora and fauna; farming means food”. Michael Gove could stick that in his pipe and smoke it.

Farmers Weekly – August 2024