Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-09-15
Topic: Agriculture
Sue Hayman (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am very pleased to support Amendment 118, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, to which I have added my name. I commend her for the way she so ably introduced it—her knowledge is far greater than mine We have strongly welcomed the National Food Strategy and its recommendations that aim to deliver "healthy, affordable food" and build a sustainable agriculture sector in an efficient and cost-effective way. However, we support the noble Baroness’s amendment because it draws government attention to critical aspects of the impact of the ways in which we farm and produce our food, which, as she quite rightly says, are absent from the Environment Bill Amendment 118 first looks at the effect on biodiversity. There is no doubt that the precious biodiversity that sustains our food systems is in decline. The first ever global report on the state of biodiversity for food and agriculture, launched two years ago by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, confirms this. The National Food Strategy rightly observes: "The global food system is the single biggest contributor to biodiversity loss, deforestation, drought, freshwater pollution and the collapse of aquatic wildlife. It is the second-biggest contributor to climate change, after the energy industry." The noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, explained that, in the UK, agriculture contributes to, and is affected by, climate change. Every stage in the food production cycle—from preparing, growing and harvesting, through to production, storage, processing, packaging, transporting and cooking—releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Methane produced by livestock during digestion has received a lot of media coverage, while nitrous oxide emissions from mineral nitrogen fertilisers are also a problem. The Government have demonstrated that they are working to tackle this through the new ELM schemes, for example, but, as the strategy confirms, this will not be enough on its own The noble Earl, Lord Caithness, spoke up for our farmers and, very importantly, said that never again should nature be separated from farming. The National Food Strategy also contains recommendations to address the major issues facing the food system, including climate change, biodiversity loss, land use, diet-related disease, health inequality, food security and trade. So it makes absolute sense to me that the approach should be reviewed, as proposed in this amendment, to ensure that it is making progress and continues to do so Amendment 118 also looks at the effect of greenhouse gas emissions and asks for a review in this area. If you read it, the National Food Strategy has an awful lot to say on emissions. For example, it says: "Agriculture alone produces 10% of UK greenhouse gas emissions" and that our "food system accounts for a fifth of domestic emissions—but that figure rises to around 30% if we factor in the emissions produced by all the food we import." So there is no point in making UK farmers do all the hard work necessary to reduce carbon emissions and restore biodiversity, only to open up the market to cheap food produced to lower standards abroad. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, talked about trade and referred to the impact of food miles. If we export all the environmental harms that we wish to avoid, while undercutting and potentially bankrupting our own farmers, we achieve nothing It is not a simple task to dramatically reduce emissions from food production or to monitor and review progress. This all needs to be an integral part of the process. So I commend the noble Baroness’s amendments to the Minister and look forward to a positive response.