In Sussex, the NFU will have stands at the Heathfield Show on the 23 May and the South of England Show on the 5-7 June.
At the Heathfield Show, Group Secretary Helen Kirby and her team will have their usual presence, supporting a show which remains a popular one-day farming event with people travelling far and wide. Let’s hope for some better weather at this year’s show.
For the South of England Show, the Friday of the show will be busy with MP roundtable meetings, member meetings, and the opportunity for members to talk to head office staff on specific issues, such as ELMs and SFI.
We’re also looking forward to hosting two pre-harvest health and safety events, with the first event near Rye in East Sussex on the 11 June and the second event near Petworth in West Sussex on the 18 June. Sign up for these can be found within the newsletter and on our website.
In the run up to the local elections, the external affairs team were busy working with county officeholders to ensure briefing opportunities were offered to those standing.
All Sussex campaign teams from across the parties were contacted ensuring the NFU local election manifesto was distributed, a key building block to future engagement.
Later in May, we will be hosting Beccy Cooper MP with a local grower member and Jess Brown-Fuller MP at our Chichester branch chair’s farm.
On our wider stakeholder work, we had a productive stakeholder meeting with the South Downs National Park at the end of April, our work with Sussex Police on livestock worrying continues, and we are again working with the fire service on fire prevention advice ahead of harvest.
Please do reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions about upcoming meetings or our stakeholder engagement in the county.