Under the current Government, East Riding farmers have been treated as dispensable and the country has become increasingly dependent on imports of meat, dairy produce and vegetables which we could grow ourselves, says Graham Stuart, MP for Beverley and Holderness.
Speaking after the Conservative Party launched its A New Age of Agriculture document, he said: “Allowing this trend to continue is neither morally or strategically desirable when global food demand is projected to double by 2050.
“Falls in domestic production not only weaken our food security, but threaten the viability of rural communities.”
He said a new approach needed to be looked at which would reverse this damaging trend.
Increasing production should become a strategic priority, while preventing a return to the days of intervention which distorted the market.
Graham said: “Clearly there will be pressure going forward on both the domestic and EU budgets for agriculture. No government is going to write larger cheques for farming in the years ahead. But we can focus on creating the conditions which allow our farmers to compete as they move closer to the market.”
In A New Age of Agriculture, the Conservative Party sets out five key conditions for a thriving agricultural sector:
- Promoting fair competition – by ensuring honest country of origin food labelling and a supermarket ombudsman to enforce a code of practice to ensure fair treatment of suppliers.
- Reducing the burden of regulation – with fewer on-farm inspections, greater emphasis on voluntary schemes for self-regulation, proper cost-benefit analysis of EU rules and a focus on outcomes, not processes.
- A Common Agricultural Policy which provides long term stability – with a reformed regime post-2013 which sees less support linked to production and a shift of resources across the EU to the rural development programme, to the benefit of the environment, British farmers and the taxpayer.
- Taking effective action on animal health and welfare – with an animal health strategy that protects the industry and consumers and promotes our high animal welfare standards, including working at an international level to include production standards in WTO negotiations.
- Enabling increased production whilst protecting the environment – with a package of measures to raise production sustainably and boost our science base by prioritising agricultural R&D within Defra’s budget.
The party also announced two important new policies:
- The introduction of rules into the new national planning framework to prevent the development of the most fertile farmland (grades 1 and 2), in all but exceptional circumstances.
- Fundamental reform of the Rural Payments Agency (RPA), appointing the Minister for Farming as Chairman of its Management Board, to improve accountability, reduce costs and drive up performance.
The Government recently published its Food 2030 strategy, but while this belated recognition that farming matters was a welcome step forward, it has little credibility after more than a decade in which the Government has devalued British agriculture and allowed domestic production to decline.
Graham added: “Farming, in particular on the prime land in Beverley and Holderness, has a critical role in Britain’s future. As the provider of the majority of our food and the manager of 70 per cent of our landscape, the industry should look forward to a rewarding future under a Conservative government which wants it to succeed and believes that farming matters.”
A New Age of Agriculture policy document can be found here and a copy of Nick Herbert’s speech to the NFU, which can also be read here.
