Despite being a miserable day in Oxford, the feeling at the Oxford Farming Conference certainly wasn’t, with its ambitious objectives certainly being met.

The morning kicked off with Glencore’s breakfast meeting titled ‘Global Commodity Markets – a Glencore perspective’ which told delegates Chinese meat consumption will increase 10kg per person over the next 10-20 years. This fuelled enthusiasm in all industry sectors that prices could increase and more export markets open.

Louise Labuschagne, joint owner of Kenyan company Real IPM, followed the breakfast in the ‘Farming’s Future and its Challenges’ session. She shook farmers up with her comments on integrated pest management.

“You don’t have IPM yet. Get a backbone, stand up and get it,” she said.

“Get up out of your seats and realise how powerful these tools are.”

Speaking about integrated pest management, Ms Labuschagne said Africa was in the lead, with growers in South America and Kenya having far more opportunities to use biological controls than any EU Member State.

“African government and regulators provide a real enabling environment for low pesticide farming,” she said.

Ms Labuschagne discussed real IPM tools in Kenya such as bio-pesticides and bio-fertilisers. She showed how South African sprout growers increased output from nine rings of sprouts up to 22 rings – a significant output through bio-fertiliser methods. Club root incidences had also declined with this product.

She discussed the use of predatory mites and other natural enemies in vegetables and how they played a significant part in crop growth and development. Some of these developments had worked alongside Syngenta Bioline, a biological arm of global leader, Syngenta.

She explained; “[The UK needs a] Pragmatic approach like we have in Africa to bring the cost down.”

“We need synergy between biological and chemical controls and both have their arguments.”

George Monibot of the Guardian also challenged farmers on various levels.

He criticised the NFU for encouraging maize growing on prime arable land which ‘destroys the land’.

He also criticised the industry on the CAP, Single Farm Payment and on their [farmers] ‘tapped on’ Pillar two payments.

In addition to this, he called for de-stocking of the hills which ‘produced little food’ yet claimed ‘large payments for little output’.

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