Agricultural Sector (EUC Report) — House of Lords, 2016-11-22
Topic: Agriculture
Hazel Byford (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the introduction by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market. I was lucky enough to be one of the people who served under her chairmanship on several different reports. Some of the comments that come through this last report reminded me of one of our early ones, on innovation in agriculture. One of the key challenges of that was about how we get knowledge and good practice transferred from science to normal working on-farm. I was quite interested looking through the report to find that again reflected The noble Baroness and her committee really are to be congratulated on their report, which looked at price volatility and creating a more resilient agricultural sector. The recommendations were concluded before the June referendum result, as has been referred to, and hence the findings are even more key than they were at the time of publication, because clearly now we have an additional challenge Yesterday’s torrential rain can leave nobody in any doubt that climatic fluctuations are becoming a more regular feature. They are one of the causes of price volatility. When considering this, the committee felt that subsidised insurance schemes should not replace the current provision of direct income support through CAP. Following the decision to leave the EU, the Government will need to work with the industry to consider other methods for future insurance schemes, as the noble Baroness has referred to. In their response to recommendation 2, the Government confirmed that Defra has already set up the facility to give grants of up to £20,000 per farmer, available through the farming recovery fund. Could my noble friend the Minister clarify whether these payments are available immediately after a natural disaster, or whether there is a delay? My understanding is that there is sometimes a delay, which puts huge pressure on those farmers who are directly affected at the time Price volatility in agricultural commodity markets undermines the ability of farmers to make investment plans with confidence. Longer periods of low prices have resulted in the reduction of livestock herds, most noticeably in the dairy industry where farmers continue to exit the business, or in the switching of crops grown for food or fuel. These are some of the considerations facing farmers when taking decisions about future investments. As has been said, farmers take a long-term view. New buildings, machinery and diversification schemes all come at a price; uncertainty and lack of confidence in future profit make those decisions even harder I apologise; I should have acknowledged at the beginning that we have family farming interests and we receive the basic farm payment Neither the Commission nor the UK Government is solely responsible for providing information support. Those in the farming community, both here and in member states, have opportunities to help each other, through co-operatives, marketing products, and closer chain links between the food grown on-field and that eventually ending up on the plate. The AHDB, RASE—the Royal Agricultural Society—and its Innovation for Agriculture charity all have a part to play. If one is looking for added value, one could turn to organisations such as LEAF, of which I have had the great privilege of being president for the last year. Value is added to the goods produced and is recognised easily by the purchaser. These organisations promote high-quality, healthy food, something which all of us could aspire to The key to creating future resilience will come from science and technology, as referred to in the report. If anybody happened to be here last week listening to the Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Mark Walport, as I was, they will realise what an important key to volatility and to the long-term future the whole question of science and technology can be. Within that is the question of how you manage risk In relation to recommendation 11, the Government’s response to funding of the agriculture sector reminds us that this Government have invested some £300 million from the public sector, alongside some £500 million being invested from the private sector. One of the things that comes out clearly from the report, which I was really pleased to see, is that it is looking to a future where both sectors work closely together. It is not a question of one source of funding being provided by the Government while farmers do the rest. There is a definite blending of the two, for the benefit of the whole Additionally, we have help from the UK agricultural tech strategy; £160 million is allocated to this, of which £77 million has already gone to 100 projects. It is key that the data from these projects and from other research are shared, available and passed down to farmers to enable best practice. One of the big challenges perhaps not picked up in the report, which I would like to have seen, is the question of how we get that information to the very hard-to-reach farms. So often the smaller farms—which are on their own and do not have big business plans—are the very ones needing that sort of help. Unless I missed it in the report, that was one aspect about which I thought, "I wish, I wish" We are obviously waiting for the Government’s 25-year plan for food and farming and their plan for the environment. I hope that the Minister may be able to say a little more about that in his winding up As we all accept, volatility is here to stay. The most important thing is that we build in risk provision to try to alleviate it in planning our forward businesses. The committee also quite rightly recognised the difficulty of forward planning for tenant farmers. It recommended that longer-term tenancies would aid those tenant farmers in seeking diversity and strengthening their stability. As the noble Baroness said, it also reflected on retirement schemes and equally, at the other end, on the encouragement of new entrants. To digress a little bit, I would particularly like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Plumb, who is not in his seat tonight, who has instigated a very good mentoring scheme and the welcoming and admitting of new young people into the industry. If I were looking at the other end, I would also mention the Addington fund, which helps people when they are retiring to find somewhere to retire to. At the same time, it often provides for little units in which they can continue to do some form of work. There are things going on in this country and I am sure in Europe too, which the committee could not cover. I hope the noble Baroness will not mind my having added them in my contribution tonight, because it is extremely important that we are aware of what goes on outside as well I mentioned science and technology. It offers us a chance of better animal breeding programmes, of tackling the big challenge of disease control with animals and with plants, of the better use of soil and water, and— if I might say it again—the ending of the appalling waste of food that we have seen. Again, I congratulate Sub-Committee D on its excellent report. A third of the food that we produce is wasted. If we are trying to restrain the amount of volatility that there is around, one good way would surely be to use the food we produce in a better way and reduce waste I congratulate the Select Committee. The questions that it has posed, both on the Commission and on government here, are very apt and very timely. I suspect that the response will be slightly different from what it would have been had we had this debate before the June referendum result was known. However, the use of public money and the input from our own financial institutions, the political decisions that affect volatility—I think of the Russian trade ban, which has had implications over recent years—and the way in which we can work together to produce food in the long term are all hugely important The noble Baroness talked about the importance of insurance and how we might deal with that, as well as the importance of future financial development. I was very pleased to get some facts and figures on the loans that our banks have been making. Some £24 billion is available to farmers, of which about £17 billion has already been called upon this year. The work of banks, including the European Investment Bank, is crucial when looking at how to build sustainable and productive farming in the future. Ultimately, the goods that we produce are not just about the environment; they are about the basic necessity to produce food for all of us to eat. The way in which we do this is hugely important if it is also to be of benefit to the environment The committee has done an excellent job in bringing things together for us to reflect on tonight. I am sorry that I have been able to touch on only a few of the aspects, but there is much in the report and, through the noble Baroness, I congratulate and thank the whole committee. I look forward to the Minister’s response.