The next generation of farmers aired their feelings on the future of their industry during a thought-provoking discussion at the Norfolk Farming Conference.
The event at the Norfolk Showground heard from five young professionals associated with the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Association's (RNAA's) Norfolk Voices for Norfolk Futures initiative.
They included David Long, a poultry farm manager for Bernard Matthews, George West, whose family runs a mixed arable and livestock farm near Diss, and Felix Field, who aims to incorporate sustainable, regenerative farming practices into his sixth-generation family farm business in south west Norfolk, while "maintaining a focus on food production".
There were also two panellists who entered the industry without having a farming background - Connor Tindall-Read, assistant farm manager at Holkham Estate, and Hannah Carthy, a field trials technician for the Norwich-based British Beet Research Organisation (BBRO).
The meeting outlined the significant challenges facing the sector, including climate change, competitive pressures, environmental targets and shifting consumer habits.
The panel was asked what single issue they would ask the government to consider for their future.
Connor Tindall-Read echoed a recurring sentiment from the conference - the need to "keep food security at the centre of policy".
"I put nature on a similar pedestal and it is very important, but I think we forget why we are farming sometimes," he said. "Regenerative farming is building nature up alongside farming – it has its challenges, quite a lot of challenges, but it still needs to produce food.
The panellists agreed that better public communication about food, nature and diet was crucial, and researcher Hannah Carthy said her top priority for government concerned education.
"I think more agricultural topics should be introduced into the school curriculum," she said. "I can’t really believe it is still considered extra-curricular.
"We learn in geography about volcanoes and the sort of things that don’t really concern us day-to-day, but most schoolchildren would not know if they were looking at a beet crop or a potato, so I feel like there could be more that would lead them into more focused career choices."
George West, who has already converted barns into holiday accommodation at his family farm and is looking to open a farm shop, said farmers needed a more supportive planning system to help them diversify.
"Farmers are being pushed to diversify, diversify, diversify, in order to survive this current market, but you get to the planning stage and it is utterly painful," he said.
"I have spent the last four years trying to push a farm shop through and that could put a farm on the brink of bankruptcy if we’re not careful. The amount of money and time you have to put in, to wait three months for a response, it needs reform for the whole system to allow us to diversify."
As well as the need to strike a balance between food production and environmental responsibilities, the panel also discussed how new technologies and data analysis can improve farm sustainability, and why diet and health discussions matter to agriculture – both also key themes at the conference.
When asked to describe their generation in one word, the "Norfolk Scholars" replied with the adjectives "resourceful, open-minded, innovative and revolutionary".
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