Speaking at a fringe event at the Liberal Democrat party conference in Brighton on Monday, NFU president Meurig Raymond said the union would work across political parties to ensure the best deal for farming.

At the event - the first of the party political conference season - NFU members were able to quiz Baroness Parminter, the Lib Dems’ Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson for the party, and Mark Williams, the party’s Commons Defra spokesperson.
 
Commenting after the event, Meurig Raymond said, “Farming… needs a dynamic, profitable and productive future to enable British food and farming to thrive. We need to ensure that our Government can support this fantastic industry with the right policies to ensure we’re able to feed the nation and play a part in feeding the world.
 
“The decision to leave the EU will impact on every UK citizen. But for farmers, the decision will inevitably mean changes to our businesses – some of them potentially quite substantial as we look at where and how we trade.
 
“We now have the opportunity to take learnings from the Common Agricultural Policy to produce a tailor-made domestic farming policy, one built on a cross-party consensus to support a new, invigorated domestic agricultural policy which can match the scale of vision not seen since the post-war years.”
 
Mr Raymond also claimed farmers would deliver for the environment if the sector is doing well, saying, “When farming is profitable farmers will invest into infrastructure and in improving their environmental standards. Every farmer wants to leave the countryside with a better environmental footprint for the next generation.”

Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, alongside the leader of the Welsh Lib Dems, launched a campaign to protect current farm spending, criticising the government for only guaranteeing farm support in its current guise up until 2020.