The Future of Commoning

Nearly fifty people turned up to our AGM and Annual Conference. We had a packed agenda. Dave Smith our Chairman skilfully steered us through the AGM business and the motion to allow committee members to serve a three-year term was passed unanimously.

The Committee Members for 2011 are:

Lakes North: John Rowland

Lakes North Central: Carl Walters

Lakes West: Duncan Ellwood

Lakes South Central: Joe Relph

Lakes South West: John Atkinson

Eastern Fells: Dave Smith

Kirkby Stephen: Ernest Coulthard

Crosby: Harry Hutchinson

Howgills: Vacant

Coastal: Vacant

Non Regional: John Jackson, Pauline Blair, William Steele, Marianne Teasdale.

Co-opted: Andrew Humphries, Julia Aglionby, Charles Raine.

We then had an interesting afternoon session with four speakers:

Julia Aglionby from H& H Bowe presented the interim results of the voting for establishing a Commons Council for Cumbria. The results indicate a favourable response to the idea of setting up a Commons Council. There will be more information on this soon.

Alistair Mackintosh, NFU Livestock Board Chairman outlined current and future prospects for English Livestock. Farming matters as food production is back on the agenda and farmers will need to produce at least 40% more food. They will need to produce more with less input and less impact.

Will Cockbain, NFU Hill Farming spokesperson talked about current and future prospects for farming the Uplands and Common Land and CAP reform. He was reasonably optimistic that productive hill farming will come out of CAP reform.

Gwyn Jones, European Forum for Nature Conservation and Pastoralism talked about the miss-match between policy and reality on common pastures in Scotland.

Members of the audience had the opportunity to ask questions and we finished with tea and biscuits.

Thank you to the speakers and to everyone who attended.