Farming

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituency is far more rural than its name suggests, with many farms around the towns of Otley and Yeadon and the villages of Bramhope, Pool and Arthington. I have visited many of those farms and seen a range of practices, as well as many farms in North Yorkshire, over the border, particularly after the pandemic.

Properly supporting our nation’s farmers is essential to meeting our nature and climate targets. The Government must do more to support our farmers to deliver more sustainable food production and implement environmental land management strategies. DEFRA’s agricultural transition plan is a step in the right direction towards a more resilient and prosperous agriculture sector that is capable of delivering sustainable food production while meeting nature and climate targets.

The offer for 2024 includes some welcome components, including an expanded set of actions, an average uplift in payments of 10%, increased payment frequency and a commitment to double the amount of agreements offered for more complex and targeted environmental land management. The review and refresh of payment rates should serve to better reflect the value of the public goods provided by certain types of habitat and management actions. However, there is no publicly available data to demonstrate how these payment rates have been calculated, which is crucial in building transparency, evaluating progress and securing value for money.

DEFRA needs to publish scheme payment methodologies, as well as a clear payment strategy that forecasts expenditure on different scheme actions and the outcomes that are expected as a result. One of the main weaknesses of the farming transition to date has been DEFRA’s reliance on low-ambition, free-choice actions within the broad and shallow elements of environmental land management. The design choice is intended to maintain maximum flexibility, but it risks undermining the environmental effectiveness of the scheme with evidence suggesting that previous similar approaches have not secured their intended objectives. Over time, the sustainable farming incentive needs to evolve to enable the delivery of a whole farm-approach, ensuring that a minimum level of environmental action is delivered as part of a joined-up and cohesive scheme. We need both a degree of flexibility to account for individual circumstances and to maintain a minimum level of ambitious environmental delivery.

For farmers to truly be supported to increase sustainable practices, we urgently need to address the green skills shortage for farming. Successfully integrating environmental actions into the heart of farm-based business decision making will be a new concept for many. With over 300 actions to choose from, many farmers need the right support to deliver the right actions for their farm and the environment. Access to expert, high-quality advice will be critical to delivering higher quality environmental outcomes, business benefits and farmer buy-in. Farmers need access to ecological expertise and support for farmer-to-farmer peer learning and knowledge exchange. There is simply a lack of people and skills to help land managers do the right things in the right places at a pace that meets our climate and biodiversity targets.

As the rural economy changes, there is the opportunity to develop more skills in managing natural capital, such as stone walls, hedgerows, natural flood management and habitat areas. It is a great opportunity to support the current and next generation to have the skills to manage a landscape for food, nature and climate. With the focus on managing hedgerows better for carbon capture and biodiversity, new skills will be needed in the management of bigger, bushy hedges. With increased focus on tree planting, there will be a greater need for jobs in managing woodlands and the by-products that will be produced over the next 20 to 30 years before timber is ready to be felled. We need a national nature service for young people to introduce them to these green skills and the job opportunities that follow, as well as working closely with agricultural colleges and universities so they can provide the courses and qualifications for the sustainable farming transition.

I have spoken many times about the essential role of hedgerows and coppicing to our agricultural heritage and the protection of our natural environment and landscape. Hedgerows are essential carbon sinks to help us meet our COP and convention on biological diversity commitments. Research by CPRE, the Countryside Charity, found that expanding the hedgerow network by 40% would create more than 25,000 new jobs over the next three decades, and that for every £1 spent on hedgerows, a return of as much as £3.92 can be expected from the associated ecosystem services. I have heard from farmers that they want more hedgerows on their farms, but the lack of a skilled workforce is a barrier.

I went to see Richard Bramley’s farm near Tadcaster, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather). Richard is the chair of the National Farmers Union environment forum. He had planted hundreds of metres of hedgerows, and it was great to see the biodiversity increase, with the associated carbon benefits. He said that the lack of a skilled workforce was a barrier to getting more hedgerows. That and other areas of green skills need to be tackled if we are to see an expansion of our hedgerow network.

Richard also highlighted the need for the availability of nursery stocks. Why are there now so few local authority nurseries? In Leeds, the Arium provides plants for the whole city, as well as raising revenue for the council. DEFRA and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities should offer seed funding for many more such nurseries. Richard also highlighted the need for continuing payments for sensitive maintenance. He rightly pointed out that a good hedge, a store for carbon and a hive of biodiversity, could last centuries. We need to invest in those skills and skills-based activities if we are to see the necessary hedgerow planting and maintenance to meet our existing targets. Hedgerows produce crops and provide food for people and animals.

When I attended the convention on biological diversity at the UN biodiversity conference at COP15, Governments agreed a new set of goals for nature over this decade. Unfortunately, the UK is one of the most severely nature-depleted countries worldwide, as we have heard successive Ministers admit. The Natural History Museum’s biodiversity intactness index, probably the best indicator of global biodiversity, has revealed that the world has crashed through the safe limit for humanity for biodiversity loss, and placed the UK’s 53% score in the bottom 10% of all countries, well below China and last in the G7. That is not a record of which any of us should be proud.

The Conservatives’ Environment Act 2021 target on species abundance, which they were forced to concede because of Opposition amendments, promised only to “halt the decline” in species by 2030. Just halting the decline, or getting a net zero for nature, is not good enough. Our ambition is to be nature positive.

[George Eustice]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Government also set a target to increase species abundance in the period after 2030. It is only through close analysis of the data that we realised that was probably the best that could be achieved, even if we acted immediately.

[Alex Sobel]

I want to agree to disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. The fact that the baseline is so low makes it an easy target, so that shows a lack of ambition. Let us have a general election and we can test that more accurately going forward.

To finish, we need to focus on improving our rewilding, reforesting and biodiversity, and all natural landscapes should be part of that. We need to fully support our farmers to be part of this transition. We will not get there without their support, their hard work, and the land they work on.