AIC engages with political and industry stakeholders at post-General Election party conferences
With the first political party conference season since summer's General Election now largely complete, the Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) has used the recent events to make the case for modern, sustainable, commercial agriculture.
Representing the UK agri-supply industry sectors of Animal Feed, Combinable Crops, Crop Protection and Agronomy, Fertiliser, and Seed, AIC has held valuable engagements with politicians from across the political spectrum and stakeholders over the past six weeks.
On 30 August and 1 September, AIC Scotland Policy Manager Ian Muirhead attended the Scottish National Party (SNP) Conference in Edinburgh to meet with key ministers including Mairi Gougeon MSP, Jim Fairlie MSP, and Jenni Minto MSP who has portfolio responsibility for Food Standards Scotland.
Productive talks were also held with NFU Scotland President Martin Kennedy and Director of Policy Jonnie Hall.
Meanwhile, AIC's Head of Policy and External Affairs headed to Brighton for the Liberal Democrats Conference on 14-17 September.
The party now has 72 MPs and the Liberal Democrat Alistair Carmichael MP chairs the influential Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Efra) Committee. Watch Ed's video update.
With the Labour Party winning a landslide majority in the 2024 General Election, AIC's Chief Executive Robert Sheasby travelled to Liverpool for the party's conference of the new UK Government held between 22-25 September.
Robert spoke with the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs Daniel Zeichner MP and other industry stakeholders.
Robert also attended the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham on 30 September where he appeared at a fringe event hosted by the think tank Bright Blue.
He was part of a panel discussing "Britain’s farming future" alongside George Freeman MP (Former Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation), Jesse Norman MP (Former Financial Secretary to HM Treasury), CropLife UK's Head of External Affairs Josh Wooliscroft, and Fiona Harvey, Environment Editor at The Guardian.
Visit AIC's website to learn more about the trade association's advocacy work on behalf of its Member businesses in the UK agri-supply industry.
Author
Oli Hill
As Head of Communications, Oli creates and oversees the content published on AIC's website, emails, Member briefings, print publications, and social media. A qualified multimedia journalist, he previously spent six years working at Farmers Weekly magazine as a Senior Reporter on the arable team, and latterly as Community Editor. More recently he was Communications Manager at Red Tractor.