Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs Secretary Michael Gove and Former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas have been announced as two of the most significant names on the list of speakers at the 2019 Oxford Farming Conference, held on the 2nd-4th January.
The three-day event, seeing speeches such as “The Future of Farm Trading” and to be held in Oxford’s Exam Schools building, will also see talks held by Barclays UK Chairman Sir Ian Cheshire, National Farmers Union President Minette Batters, Shadow Secretary for International Trade and Climate Change Barry Gardiner, and former New Zealand High Commissioner to the UK Sir Lockwood Smith.
Gove, an alumnus of Lady Margaret Hall and former President of the Oxford Union, is expected to talk to farmers on what he expects to be the future of farming in 2019 following his speech to the 2018 conference.
The final day of the conference will see a “A View from the City” of farming from Sir Ian Cheshire and Caroline Lucas’s “Radical Alternative for British Agriculture”.
The conference has also organised formal dinners for its attendants in the Colleges of Exeter, Christ Church, and Worcester, and will be hosted on Thursday 4th by the Oxford Union, who in honour of the conference have organised a debate under the motion: “This House believes the country would be better served if farmers focused on profits rather than public goods”.
The Oxford Farming Conference has heard speeches in previous years from New College’s Professor of Economic Policy Dieter Helm and former Rural Affairs Secretaries Andrea Leadsom and Liz Truss.
