Nine separate government bodies, including Natural England, the Environment Agency and the Rural Payments Agency, made at least 114,000 visits to English farms during 2011 and 2012, costing £47 million, reports Farmers Weekly.

Some 84% of farmers responding to the NAO survey believed oversight bodies should coordinate their activity more. Whilst farm inspections provide assurance that farmers comply with regulations and prevent animal disease and environmental pollution. They are also needed to check that farmers comply with common agricultural policy (CAP) so that they can receive payments from the European Union. The NAO report makes a series of recommendations around avoiding the duplication of effort, need for coordination and information sharing and ensuring cost effectiveness.

The report – ‘streamlining farm oversight’ – can be found here.

“a poll by the Campaign to Protect Rural England has found that four out of five adults believe farmers have a duty to look after the landscape for future generations.

Farmers should plant wild flowers on the margins of fields to provide seeds for birds in the winter and protect trees and dig ponds, according to an accompanying CPRE report on future of the countryside.

The report also calls for farmers to have more free range livestock, and grow a more diverse range of fruit and vegetables rather than focus on single crops.

Fewer than a fifth of British adults would accept a more industrialised farming sector and an overwhelming 78 per cent of people want farmers to get more support to carry out environmentally sustainable farming practices like leaving land fallow for birds like skylarks or grey partridges.”

I would be interested to see the postcodes of the respondents to this survey and in doing some cross referencing with the Index of Multiple Deprivation to get an overview of the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents.

There is a quiet and dignified tradition of people living in ruralEnglandwho have earned their livelihoods there for generations. I think they are one of the most overlooked and under-consulted element of the British Population – as with so many other issues where people speak for them or offer advice about how they should live their lives – I wonder what they might actually say themselves if anyone ever made a real effort to engage them on issues like this? – and whilst we’re at it what is an “industrialised farming sector” – seems to me that particular hobby horse bolted somewhere around the early 70s