ABSTRACT
In contrast to rural conservation the agricultural policy community remains a remarkably closed one. It is a community in which a small number of interest groups, pre-eminently the National Farmers’ Union and the Country Landowners’ Association, are highly significant, in some instances enjoying exclusive representation enshrined in statute. In responding to environmental criticisms of modern farming, agricultural interests have been determined to preserve two cherished and related freedoms: first the autonomy of the Ministry and of the farming community in the administration and implementation of agricultural policy; and second the autonomy of the farmer in making production and land use decisions. The Ministry of Agriculture’s Advisory Council for Agriculture and Horticulture in its 1978 Strutt Report Agriculture and the Countryside, proposed more modestly that the remit of Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Agricultural Development and Advisory Service should be widened to include conservation as well as food production.
