A REGULAR series of formal consultations with local farmers and farmers? leaders in West Devon and Torridge has been launched by the local Conservative Party.
Geoffrey Cox, Conservative parliamentary spokesman for West Devon and Torridge, announced the launch on Tuesday.
He said: ?The Conservative Farmers? Forum will provide an opportunity for consultation, debate and policy development up to and beyond the general election.
?We need an approach to the problems the countryside faces that is based not on diktats and theories conceived by bureaucrats in Brussels or in Whitehall, but on a practical understanding of the realities of farmers? lives. That?s what this forum is aimed at achieving.?
Mr Cox said the forum would bring together respected non-party political figures from various related fields and those with a lifetime?s experience in farming to debate and discuss the way forward for farming and the countryside. He added the first thing the Conservatives would do in government was put a minister with exclusive responsibility for agriculture back in the Cabinet.
The first meeting, admission to which is free but by ticket only, will be at Clinton Hall, Merton, tomorrow (Friday) at 7pm.
The panel will include John Daw, dairy farmer and former Devon County NFU chairman; Will Dunn, Devon YFC chairman and local farmer; John Lee, farmer and member of the EU CAP advisory committee; the Rev Gordon Gatward, director of Arthur Rank Centre and chairman of the ARC Addington Fund; and Mr Cox.
Rural Stress Network organiser James Morrish is co-ordinator of the forum and tickets can be requested on 01837 54151.