THE second annual Landtalks lecture was held at the Woolsery & District Agricultural Show at Clovelly on Monday, July 30.

Landtalks is a Clovelly initiative inspired by Mrs Zeenat Rous that aims to provide a platform for farmers, who don’t usually have the opportunity to ask questions directly of those who can give them answers. Landtalks invites influential policy makers to talk on hard hitting farming and environmental issues, designed to give local farms access to high level policy information that they can then apply to their businesses.

The Landtalks initiative started last year with MP for Tiverton and Honiton Neil Parish as the first speaker. This year, Dr Alastair Leake, the director of policy at the Game and Wildlife Conservancy Trust spoke about ‘Life outside the CAP: A threat or an opportunity for farming?’

Dr Leake works with governments and many environmental and agricultural organisations. He has been advising Defra on the new schemes based on GWCT’s experience of monitoring the effect of different farming methods on biodiversity over the last 25 years.

Dr Leake covered topics such as; what agricultural and environmental schemes may look like after the CAP, whether south west farmers and land managers will see new opportunities or threats to their businesses and shared the very latest updates from his advisory role with Defra.

Andrée Carter, show secretary and member of the Association of Shows and Agricultural Organisations (ASAO), said: “We were really pleased to bring such a high-level discussion to the local farming community here in North Devon through our show and encourage other shows to make this type of information exchange accessible to all farms for post CAP agriculture.”