The Oxford Farming Conference (OFC) and The Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) are both held over the same few days yet have significant differences of opinions over the future of farming.

Both events tackle key challenges within agriculture and set out their stalls for the forthcoming years ahead. However, one attendee at the ORFC has slammed the OFC for being ‘stuck in a time warp’.

Writing in the Ecologist, Peter Melchett, Policy Director of the Soil Association, said the ORFC was ‘real farming’ and ‘showed the way to a cleaner, greener and healthier future’.

“The Oxford Real Farming Conference is about discussing innovations in technology that are needed for farming to face the challenges of achieving massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, tackling the horrendous problems of diet-related ill health, and restoring beauty, colour, wildlife and human cultivators to our farmed countryside,” he wrote in the Ecologist today, January 8^th.

Despite not once mentioning food production, Mr Melchett went on to say the OFC had ‘for decades’ only seemed to think GM crops is ‘the only new development in agriculture worth discussing’.

He attacked Lord Krebs, who spoke at OFC, ‘for [a] seemingly obligatory attack on organic farming and food.’

He went onto say; “Scientists found that globally organic yields are generally around 19% below non-organic, and that could reduce to only 8-9% below with better use of modern organic techniques.”

He continued to bang the organic drum saying; “It has always been the case that for some crops, like beans, peas, tomatoes, lentils and oats, organic and non-organic yields are the same, while grass-reared beef and lamb will be as or more productive on organic farms.”

He went onto mention the Square Meal report, which was on the agenda at ORFC, and how it ‘focused on the vital importance of fighting food poverty and diet related ill-health, and the multiple benefits of agro-ecological farming systems - like organic’.

He said, again not mentioning food production, that agro-ecological farming systems ‘are proven to deliver better animal welfare, more wildlife on farms, lower greenhouse gas emissions, lower levels of pollution from pesticides and fertiliser run-off, and healthier diets’.