Farming, wildlife and climate change have been alternating headlines in this newspaper for some time now, but this week has seen all three battle it out to be our front page story.

In an uncharacteristically frank rant on social media, NFUS president Martin Kennedy – for want of a better metaphor – gave his backroom staff kittens when he launched a stout defence of farming against its many detractors on what it is doing to fight climate change and highlighting its important role in nurturing the flora and fauna that make up Scotland's complex bio-diversity.

Using his own 'carbon index' as an example, he has proven that farmers are listening and doing something about climate change, while other industries seem to just be able to buy a tree and get themselves off the hook. He also made the succinct point that we all need to eat too!

Whether by clever political positioning, or just by chance, it emerged this week that even the seemingly tanker-like immobility of the EU to move fast in reacting to changing circumstances is now no longer a given. While the UK's politicians and those in the devolved nations, sit and dither about a 'greenprint' for agriculture, MEPs have been voting through a series of measures which effectively lighten the shades of green painted on the EU's agri-support map for the future and turn again to rewarding production of staples that are under threat from being missing from our supermarket shelves.

Mr Kennedy basically made the salient point that while non governmental organisations seem to have the ear of government on shaping the future for Scottish agriculture, they do so without taking due consideration of the effect that war in Europe has had and will continue to have on food security.

Their's is a single issue argument, whether its protecting the birdies or planting trees to offset carbon change, while the production of food remains a complex, but altogether essential element of everyday living for everyone. That's a simple enough analogy that has perhaps – until Kennedy on Facebook – that has never been put to rights.

But agriculture and then the food processing sector that supports it, are so complex that sometimes it's hard to get the various arguments across from all sectors, with the inference that politicians tend to home in on simplicity for the ease of moving their paperwork from the 'in' to the 'out' tray ... or could it be they are incapable of understanding difficult argument?

We've said it before and we'll say it again, using forestry as a bettering ram to knock carbon into the ground does nothing for wildlife and general biodiversity and has a questionable rating of doing so. Agriculture, on the other hand – and maybe one of the fingers on that hand could include agro-forestry? – is setting out to quantify where it is now via carbon auditing and can measure itself against set targets. At the same time, it can also encompass the needs and aspirations of a better habitat for flora and fauna.

Hopefully, this will all kick off a debate where the likes of the RSPB can actually not blame every decline in species as 'changes in farming practice' and point a finger at afforestation, or even cats!; and WWF will more publicly acknowledge that farming is the most senior factor in affecting changes to a more diverse environment.