thetorydiary

Today the shadow environment, food and rural affairs secretary, Nick Herbert, and shadow farming minister, James Paice, are attending the NFU conference, where they have launched the party's "agenda for farming", covering a whole range of policies relating to agriculture..

The party has summed up its five key aims as:

• Enabling increased production whilst protecting the environment;
• Promoting fair competition;
• Reducing the burden of regulation;
• Further reforming the Common Agricultural Policy;
• Taking action on animal disease.

The 18-page document contains two brand new proposals...

• Introducing rules into the new national planning framework to prevent, in all but exceptional circumstances, the development of the most fertile farmland; and 
• Fundamentally reforming the Rural Payments Agency by appointing the Farming Minister as chairman of its Management Board as  a way of improving accountability, reducing costs and driving up performance.

...and you can download it in its entirety here.
 
Launching the document, Mr Herbert accused Labour of having "persistently under-valued British agriculture":

"Despite its importance to our food security, the protection of our best farmland has been downgraded and the Government has over-ridden councils who have sought to keep in place local protection of this valuable asset. In this new age of agriculture, we need to strengthen the protection of our most fertile farmland and recognise its importance as a national resource for future generations."

Jonathan Isaby

After some forensic research of the relevant statistics, Shadow Defra Seretary Nick Herbert has discovered and exposed how the country has become more dependent under Labour on foreign imports of food we could have produced ourselves. He has revealed how tens of thousands of hectares of land which was formerly used for growing produce has been lost and the number of animals being reared has also fallen dramatically.

Here are the facts he has ascertained:

• The UK’s self-sufficiency in indigenous food has fallen from 82% in 1998 to 73% in 2008;
• The UK trade gap in food, feed and drink has widened by 52% in real terms between 1998 and 2007 to £15.2 billion;
• Over 36,000 hectares of planted land for vegetables has been lost under Labour, falling from 153,000 when they took office to 116,000 in 2008;
• Over the same period, the area of land for producing fresh fruit has fallen from 36,000 hectares to 28,000 hectares;
• The number of dairy cows has fallen from 2,453,000 to 1,909,000;
• The number of beef cows has fallen from 1,911,000 to 1,670,000;
• The number of pigs has fallen from 7,834,000 to 4,714,000;
• The sheep and lamb flock has fallen from 43,983,000 to 33,131,000;
• The number of poultry kept has fallen from 169,901,000 to 166,200,000;
• The area of land for cereals has fallen from 3,358,000 to 3,274,000.

 Mr Herbert made the following conclusions about his findings:

“The Government previously claimed that it was unnecessary to increase domestic food production, and under Labour Britain has become increasingly dependent on imports of food we could grow ourselves. It should be a strategic priority of government to increase self-sufficiency in food, yet the Government are refusing to take the steps to make this happen.  They have increased the regulatory burden on British farmers; government departments continue to ignore British producers and procure foreign food, and Ministers refuse to introduce honest food labelling to benefit consumers and help support our domestic production.”

Jonathan Isaby