Climate Change: Support for Farmers

Lord Framlingham Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Framlingham (Con)]

My Lords, when I spoke in a recent debate on agriculture, I took as my text “Barley, Not Bulrushes”. I still think that is an excellent slogan: it sums up in three words the utter nonsense of current policies coming from Defra, the department responsible for feeding our nation, which no longer has either “farming” or “agriculture” in its title.

I long for the good old days of MAFF—the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. It understood farmers and farming and is sorely missed. I feel very much that with this change in title has come a change in purpose and priorities. Feeding the people and maintaining a healthy, balanced countryside is crucial to our nation’s well-being. We lose sight of this at our peril, and we are rapidly doing just that.

Our worldwide striving to increase food production is as old as time itself. Broccoli and cauliflower are excellent examples of growers’ ability to experiment and improve. Along with Brussels sprouts, they all belong to the cabbage family and derive originally from broccoli, which was enjoyed by the Romans in the sixth century BC. In fact, Pliny the Elder wrote in the first century AD that broccoli was a standard favourite in Rome. By careful selection and breeding over the centuries, we now have many different and improved vegetables to enjoy.

Improvement is the watchword. Farmers and landowners in the 17th and 18th centuries bred better livestock and improved all farming practices. They were known as the improvers, and so it has continued until the present day, with massive improvements in yields, both arable and livestock, and the use of computers to plant and to harvest. Some crops can even now be grown without soil—a technique known as hydroponics. All seemed set fair to continue improving, but the Government had other ideas.

In the name of a crackpot scheme called “net zero”, fertile, well-drained, carefully cultivated and productive farmland is to be flooded to grow bulrushes. Just when we need it most, growing food is no longer a farmer’s top priority. Is it any wonder that farmers are asking the nation what is expected of them? The farmers and their sons and daughters, whose families have nurtured their land for generations, are to be deliberately—I stress “deliberately”—taxed out of existence. It must be stopped.

The Motion asks what steps the Government

“are taking to support farmers … to adapt to climate change”.

The answer is: they do not need help for this purpose. Any climate change that takes place will be gradual, and farmers are famously imaginative and resourceful. They will produce our food if only we let them get on with it.

There is an old saying: “If you can’t help, don’t hinder”. If we really want to help both our farmers and food production, we should do two things: drop the destructive inheritance tax proposals and abandon plans to flood farmland or smother it in solar panels. We should remain faithful to our agricultural traditions and improve, not destroy. The slogan should be—must be—“Barley, Not Bulrushes”.