THE line-up of speakers at next month's Northern Farming Conference has been announced.

Emeritus Professor Allan Buckwell, Senior Fellow at the Institute for European Environmental Policy, and Upper Nisbet farmer Robert Neill, chairman of AgriScot will join a range of farmers and industry experts.

The event takes place at Hexham mart on Wednesday, November 7, under the theme "Your farm, your future".

Prof Buckwell, a former Country Land and Business Association policy director, has spent two thirds of his career as an academic agricultural economist, specialising in agriculture and rural policy. He chaired a report on Public Goods from private Land and worked on climate change and the threats and opportunities it poses to farmers in addition to green house gas accounting from land-based businesses.

Mr Neil has a tenanted farm on the Lothian Estates where he and his wife, Jacqueline, farm 320 suckler cows and 850 acres of cereals. In 2006, he was named Farmers Weekly Beef Farmer of the Year and in 2017 was Mixed Farmer of the Year and Farmer of the Year.

The other speakers include Robbie Moore, Nuffield scholar, rural surveyor and Conservative county councillor for Alnwick; Neil Wilson, head of agriculture at HSBC; James Standen, farms director at Newcastle University Farms and a tenanted arable and livestock farmer; Tom Hind, chief strategy officer at the Agricutural Development Board; and Neil Heseltine, sustainable and environmentally friendly livestock farmer from Hilltop Farm, Malham.

Andrew Robinson, conference chairman, said: "We are now more than two years on from the Brexit vote and the level of uncertainty over the effects this could have on the farming and rural inudstry continues. The conference gives a great opportunity to listen to the views of leading farmers and industry leaders on how to steer a path through the uncertainty."

The conference is a joint venture between the CLA, Strutt & Parker, Womble Bond Dickinson, Armstrong Watson, Catch,ment Sensitive Farming, Gibson &Co Solicitors, and Hexham and Northern Marts.

For more information, visit northernfarmingconference.org.uk or call 01748 907070.