Agriculture, Fisheries and the Rural Environment

Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Lindsay for introducing this wide-ranging debate so expertly, and I wish my noble friend Lord Plumb well in his richly deserved retirement.

We can do so much more than merely take note of the opportunities we have before us; we should embrace them. As the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, said, for the first time for decades we have the chance to ask ourselves fundamental questions about what we consider to be the purpose of both the countryside and agriculture—for example, how self-sufficient should we aim to be? How can we leave the land in better condition for the next generation?—and to craft solutions to address those challenges. Objectives can now be set with a more holistic approach to rural communities that go beyond the business of farming. We need to encourage vertical integration of the quality and scale of Robert Wiseman Dairies, Green & Black’s and the Covent Garden Soup Company, which started in a Suffolk farm. Such diversification creates rural employment and adds value in the food chain.

The structure of the CAP has hardly encouraged the industry to improve its productivity and, as we have heard again and again, there are now serious warnings about soil quality, biodiversity and the long-term damage caused by some modern farming methods. Now may be the time to prove the thesis that conventional tillage is destructive. Many believe that “no till” agriculture will help to preserve soil structure, moisture and carbon content while at the same time improving habitats for the worms, insects and other wildlife that they support. We need to keep glyphosates such as Roundup in the mix—a herbicide, incidentally, that the EU may ban despite evidence that it is safe. New methods can hugely lower the costs of cultivation while at the same time allowing the high-yield farming that is essential to raise productivity levels.

Low productivity remains a problem, production costs remain high and large parts of the agricultural workforce remain unskilled. More investment is required in our university sector. Both Sweden and the Netherlands have institutions ranked in the top five globally for excellence in the study of agriculture and forestry. Where are ours? It has been said that forestry and the environment have long been marginalised by the dominant role in rural policy and funding that the CAP gives to farming. Now is the time to redress the balance—public good for public money, and a common countryside policy.

We can do that, as our track record shows. We are already seen to have a global leadership role in ocean conservation, taking long-term decisions such as creating vast marine reserves around some of our overseas territories. If one considers unravelling the common agricultural policy to be challenging, the common fisheries policy is even more so. However, the UK has already taken the lead in reforming the CFP, addressing issues such as maximum sustainable yields and the banning of discards. This has led to a significant improvement in managing that mobile and renewable resource sustainably. We now have the opportunity to develop our own fisheries policy, to establish a management regime that is relevant to our waters and to our fleet. The moment we leave the EU, the EEZ becomes our exclusive economic zone and our task will be to manage this change in co-operation with our maritime neighbours. Our mission will be to create a policy that is fairer to the UK and delivers not only a more modern, profitable and competitive UK fishing industry but a healthier marine environment—a policy that helps to preserve the livelihoods of the approximately 25,000 people employed in the fishing and fish-processing industries in our coastal communities.

By all means let us acknowledge the challenges, but equally, let us be positive and welcome the opportunities that present themselves to create profitable, productive industries that secure the future of our rural and coastal communities. Let us also be associated with the highest welfare standards for animals and for custodianship of our countryside, and healthy coastal waters, enabling us to take advantage of a global appetite for high-quality foodstuffs in markets that value both quality and the principles of sustainable development.