As the penny dropped that this year’s catastrophic harvest was plunging farmers into despair and, critically from his point of view, going to hit cash-strapped voters with even higher food prices, Andy Burnham launched a rural charm offensive on social media.

‘I know I have work to do to win the trust of the farming community’, he wrote in a post. ‘As farmers you put food on our tables, serve as stewards of the great British countryside and provide the backbone of many rural communities.’

‘As a mayor, I knew what it was like to be ignored by politicians in Westminster. As Prime Minister, I will not make the same mistake… Decisions will no longer be imposed from Whitehall, but made by the people who understand their communities.’

These words may come back to haunt him, if he does not act fast. Because trust in this government among rural folk could not be lower right now.

A recent survey on behalf of the Countryside Alliance found just 15 per cent of those living in rural areas think the party is concerned about the people who live and work there.

This is a big problem, particularly as Labour has a backbench full of semi-rural MPs who will be destined for the dole queue after the next election in three years’ time unless something changes.

Labour grandee Lord Blunkett warned yesterday the party needs to ditch the family farm tax introduced by Rachel Reeves, which caused widespread protests. He said the planned ban on trail-hunting – where hounds follow a scent laid by handlers – should also be abandoned. And he urged Labour to develop a deeper understanding of the countryside.

If Burnham followed this advice, if he genuinely intends to devolve power to the countryside then he deserves our support in the rural community. But the signs are his words are hollow. No farmer I know would in any case welcome his devolution agenda, which so far appears to be limited to inserting another tier of government in local areas to enrich the client state of grifting politicians and entitled bureaucrats.

In fact, if only we country bumpkins were ‘ignored by politicians in Westminster’. Because the instinct to meddle in rural matters they do not understand is hardwired into Whitehall’s Green Blob that has a stranglehold on the Department for Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra).

Since the King of the North’s accession, one decision ‘imposed from Whitehall’ and not ‘made by the people who understand their communities’ is Labour’s proposed crackdown on game shooting by introducing licences on the release of game birds.

The Countryside Alliance says ‘there has never been a more serious threat to game shooting’. But Burnham’s Labour is not listening to ‘the people who understand their communities’, rather it is listening to self-professed environmentalists such as TV presenter Chris Packham, who campaigns to ban game bird shooting.

What Labour refuses to grasp is that shooting and hunting bind rural communities together, involving those of every ilk, most of them ‘working people’ who could not be more different from Labour’s lazy ‘toff’ stereotype in its bigoted identity politics.

Another example of Labour’s tin ear on rural issues is the response to this year’s wild fires. The Green Blob thought it knew best – as usual – and effectively banned the controlled burning of excess vegetation on moors and heaths, almost certainly because it is a practice linked to sheep farming and grouse shooting in the uplands, two activities Green zealots wish to ban.

They would prefer to see the moors ‘rewilded’, and have convinced themselves blocking a few drains and introducing the odd beaver would re-wet the land to the extent it would never catch fire. All of us with experience of upland farming warned this was a recipe for disaster.

The chickens came home to roost with their tails on fire this summer when over 57,000 acres went up in smoke, emitting nearly 1.4million tons of carbon. Homes were lost and a number of rare species lost vital habitats.

We might have expected some contrition and a partial U-turn, perhaps even an apology. Instead we got arrogance, ignorance and pig-headedness. Defra Secretary Dame Angela Eagle wrote an article in the Guardian explicitly ruling out a return to controlled burning and doubling down on the rewilding agenda.

Eagle is part of the problem. By appointing her as Defra minister in his Cabinet reshuffle, Andy Burnham went out of his way not to ‘win the trust of the farming community’ but to curry favour with Guardian-reading Leftists. Meanwhile Eagle’s under-secretary at Defra is animal rights fanatic Baroness Hayman, who’s driving much of the anti-hunting agenda.

Labour is not the natural party of the countryside, but it need not be like this. One of the best agriculture ministers since the war is reckoned to have been Tom Williams in the Attlee government. Nye Bevan and Jim Callaghan were both farmers.

And Burnham has plenty of MPs with an understanding of the rural economy from whom to choose, such as the widely respected former farming minster Daniel Zeichner and newcomers Markus Campbell-Savours (who voted against the family farm tax) and Henry Tufnell, the son of a former chairman of the Country Land and Business Association. Instead, his selections appear to be a sign he intends to carry on with the culture wars.

Andy Burnham needs the farming community: He needs our skills and our risk-taking to avert a worsening food crisis, now that imports can no longer be relied upon. He needs our entrepreneurship to create the rural businesses needed for employment and build homes so badly needed. He needs our deep knowledge of the countryside to halt the biodiversity crisis and stop the wild fires.

So, as David Blunkett rightly identified, he would be foolish to alienate us by attacking our culture with a further hunting ban, or rob us of our futures by keeping the family farm tax. And he should bring in a team at Defra who truly appreciate what it is like to live and work in the countryside. We need more than warm words, Prime Minister.

• Jamie Blackett is a farmer and the author of Red Rag To A Bull and Land Of Milk And Honey
• A previous version of this article incorrectly said that Dame Angela Eagle is vegan. She has confirmed she is not, and the piece has been amended accordingly. We apologise for the error.