Land Use Change: Food Security

Andrew Murrison Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Dyke (Glastonbury and Somerton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. I thank the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for securing this important debate.

British farmers are the best in the world. They are the bastions of the countryside and our rural way of life, and the backbone of our food system. If we lose our farms, we lose our food security, and if we lose our food security, we lose our national security and become vulnerable to volatile global markets and reliant on more foreign inputs.

Glastonbury and Somerton is home to more than 800 farms, mainly productive small family farms, and I want to keep it that way, but many farmers I have spoken to feel under assault, as they face increasing and competing demands for their land. Some are likely to give up farming altogether. It is therefore not surprising, but nevertheless worrying, that DEFRA’s land use framework consultation stated that 14% of England’s agricultural land could be reduced or totally lost to food production by 2050. As UK food security falls and global instability increases, the land use framework must ensure future food resilience.

Henry Dimbleby’s national food strategy called for a focus on food production and nature recovery. Those demands can work side by side. Many farmers in Glastonbury and Somerton already champion ecology and nature-friendly methods. To give a few examples, the Lang Partnership in Curry Rivel has done that for more than 30 years, Upton Bridge farm near Long Sutton farms regeneratively, and Higher farm near Castle Cary has planted more than 3,000 trees, sequestering 400 tonnes of carbon and increasing biodiversity by 25% since 2023. The Liberal Democrats are clear: we must financially support farmers to use sustainable, environmentally friendly methods and encourage others to do so. That is why we will properly fund the farming budget, with an additional £1 billion a year.

Meanwhile, half of UK farmers do not understand DEFRA’s vision for farming, and it is easy to see why. With the new sustainable farming incentive not yet available and higher-tier schemes open to only a handful, many farmers have been left in limbo. Over 5,800 countryside stewardship agreements were due to end in December, and although they have been given a short 12-month reprieve, that is far too late for many farmers who were forced to make the decision to destroy years of environmental investment because they did not know what was going to happen.

Those projects have delivered biodiversity, flood resilience and nature restoration for decades. If they are not available, farmers will be denied the opportunity to fulfil their crucial role of achieving a more sustainable and resilient food system. The spring spending review cut DEFRA’s budget by 2.3% annually in real terms, including a £100 million cut to the farming budget. The Liberal Democrats believe that such cuts risk doing serious harm to the environment, rural economies, farming communities and food security.

We have already seen a long-term contraction in the UK dairy industry. The number of UK dairy farms has fallen by more than 30% since 2015, while the national herd has dropped by nearly 90,000 dairy cows. The recent drop in farm-gate milk prices is yet another example of the mounting pressure threatening dairy farmers’ ability to make a living at all.

In response, I introduced the Dairy Farming and Dairy Products Bill to urge the Government to back and protect our dairy farmers. Dairy farmers deserve fairness in the supply chain, so the Government must regulate it properly. In the Bill, I have called for the Secretary of State to ensure that detrimental trade deals do not cause harm to our farmers, and to enforce point-of-origin labelling on dairy products. The public must know the provenance of their food so that they can make the right choice and are not duped into buying products purporting to be British. I have also called for the Secretary of State to give the Groceries Code Adjudicator teeth and to combine it with a dairy supply chain adjudicator so there are proper enforcement powers.

Our agricultural sector needs fairness, not financial whiplash, and a Government who back it. Instead, it is now facing the impact of the family farm tax and the risks that poses to national food security. The Government have claimed that the policy will impact “only” 27% of farms, but NFU research has shown that 75% of commercial family farms will exceed the £1 million threshold. Analysis shows that an inheritance tax bill based on a £1 million threshold, even spread over 10 years, would far exceed the average return of a medium-sized farm and absorb most earnings from larger farms.

An example of that is Paul and Ruth Kimber, who farm near Charlton Musgrove. They told me that their family have farmed there for 350 years, but they could be the ones who close their farm gates for the very last time. If the policy does not change, many farms will be forced to sell land and other assets to pay the tax. A recent Liberal Democrat freedom of information request uncovered the fact that the Government looked at changing course on this earlier this year. On behalf of farmers in Glastonbury and Somerton and across the country, I strongly urge the Government to look at it once more. Otherwise, they will put our food security at risk.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (in the Chair)]

I will begin calling the Front Benchers at 3.28 pm, so hon. Members need to be aware of time. I am sure that Chris Hinchliff will be an exemplar.