The appointment of two new junior ministers for the food and environment department Defra is more goof news for the farming community – because all three people at the head of the Labour-created ministry come from farming backgrounds.

Ever since New Labour scrapped the old Minister of Agriculture in the wake of the foot and mouth debacle a decade ago, and replaced it with the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, it had been led by ministers with no hands-on-knowledge of farming – the mere fact that the word “agriculture” was left out of the title was looked upon as a slap in the face for the industry.

Now, with the appointment of three new Conservative ministers, the department is to be led by a trio of experts who all come from farming backgrounds.

As we reported earlier, Caroline Spelman MP, the new Secretary of State, has a long and distinguished background in arable farming and held several posts in EU-wide faming organisations before she became an MP.

Significantly, one of her leading roles now will be to lead negotiations for the reform of the notorious Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). She will also take charge if the newly created, Sheffield-based quango Natural England, which has been doing interesting work on rural conservation projects.

Now, two new junior ministers have been announced and both are farmers by background and the title of Minister of State for Agriculture and Food has been reinstated. The job goes to Jim Paice MP, whose responsibilities will include sorting out the notoriously incompetent Rural Payment Agency, which has been two years late in paying out farm subsidies.

Richard Benyon MP is a farmer and former Army officer who, amongst other things, helped found the Help for Heroes charity set up to give aid to grievously wounded British soldiers from the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. He will be in charge of the natural environment and fisheries.

To have people with such inside knowledge of farming will come as a great relief to farmers after 13 years of mismanagement by ill-equipped Labour ministers. The first Defra secretary’s experience of farming came from her hobby as a caravaner; the second hailed from a family of North London Marxist intellectuals; and the third was a vegetarian with a seat in central Leeds.