THE AEA conference last Tuesday was once again a heady mix of business content and socialising – and our small industry does the latter supremely well.

Like all conferences, you get a panoramic view of the industry landscape, but in amongst it are nuggets of information that rock you back on your heels.

One occurred during the presentation by Gilles Dryancour and Ulrich Adam from CEMA (the European Farm Machinery Association). These guys are essentially ‘fire-fighters’, based in Brussels, trying to hold back, or indeed make sense, of the torrent of new legislation issued by the EU.

Worryingly, their view was that there was now very little considered analysis of the impact of new laws by EU bureaucrats. Decisions were being taken on the grounds of political correctness.

A graph showing the rising tide of legislation in recent years was akin to a profile of the North Face of the Eiger.

Staggeringly, the industry has had to spend over 10 billion euros making sure it complied with emission controls said Mr Dryancour (who holds a senior role with John Deere).  When you consider that annual sales of the farm machinery sector in the EU is 26 billion euros, that is proportionally a huge sum that has largely been lost from R&D budgets.

With the Europe issue high on the agenda in the UK, it seems a shame that the likes of UKIP should focus on immigration as the main issue rather than trying to stem the avalanche of politically correct laws sprouting from Brussels which are strangling business in red tape.

Otherwise, Robert Peston (speaking much more fluently than he sometimes comes across on TV or the radio) was upbeat, but with reservations. His view was that interest rates would rise in over the course of the next 12 months but only in very small increments – and that energy costs would remain a central issue for households and business. Beyond that, he thought the present recovery had a shelf life of ‘about three years’.

At lunch in the magnificent banqueting hall, Giles Brandreth gave a typical, cheery, irreverent speech (I think).  The setting was magnificent, but the acoustics from where I was sitting meant I could only pick out the odd phrase.

Still it did not detract from a most enjoyable and well-staged event, topped off as usual by a mix and mingle at the local Westminster Arms, where Mr Farage is often pictured nursing a pint. Pity he was otherwise engaged that day, not sure that even he would have coped with a gaggle (or whatever the collective name is) of tractor and mower folk on an ‘away day’.