Farming Road Map and Profitability Review

Baroness Grender Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Grender (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. I have several questions and would be more than happy for her to write if she is short of time or the relevant information. I also join in the thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Batters, and there will be more about the Rock review later.

For these Benches, a central question raised by the Farming Roadmap 2050 remains: what, in practical terms, has changed in the short term for farmers on the ground as a result of this document? The language of clarity and partnership is welcome, of course, but many of the underlying challenges—income instability, an uncertain transition away from direct payments, and rising regulatory pressures—remain firmly in place. What immediate measures within the road map are intended to restore confidence, particularly for small and upland farms?

I turn to funding. The headline figure of £2.5 billion for England is in regular use, but there is limited clarity as to how that funding is allocated in practice. Can the Minister undertake to provide the House with a breakdown of how that budget is spent across the principal schemes, including the sustainable farming incentive, Countryside Stewardship, higher-level stewardship and capital grants? In addition, what proportion of that budget was actually spent in 2025-26 and what is the projected spend for 2026-27? Can the Minister confirm how many farmers have been in receipt of payments in each of the past six years and whether the Government expect that number to increase or decline under the new framework?

The reopening this week of the sustainable farming incentive is, of course, welcome. However, concerns remain about the operation of a first come, first served system. What assessment has been made of whether this approach risks favouring better-resourced farms with access to professional support, such as accountancy, over the small family farms that the early release scheme is intended to benefit?

The road map presents itself as a shared vision, yet it makes no direct reference to the tenant farmers review by the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, which set out clear and practical recommendations on fairness, access and security for tenant farmers. Recommendations in this road map appear to have been informed by that review; it is just a bit of a shame that there is no explicit acknowledgment of that.

On land use, the document does not adequately address the complexity of common land arrangements, particularly in upland areas. Commoners operate within systems of shared rights that do not align easily with standard scheme design. What specific provisions are being made to ensure that those farming common land are not disadvantaged? I wonder whether, in that context, the Government will perhaps consider something such as a rolling over of higher-level stewardship agreements, with appropriate uplifts, to provide a certain level of continuity while a more suitable long-term approach is developed for what I am calling the common land conundrum, which affects around 4,000 farming businesses.

On trade, farmers continue to face a dual pressure: competition from imports produced to lower standards and friction in exporting to key markets, particularly the EU. I thank the Minister for keeping us regularly informed on progress on the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement with the EU. Would it be fair to say that some of the assumptions underpinning the road map mean that we need this resolved sooner rather than later? I wonder if even the date in the road map is a little too late.

The Government say that food security is national security. Can the Minister explain how the road map will improve the UK’s level of self-sufficiency, over what timeframe and against which measurable indicators?

Finally, at present, the gap remains clear between the laudable ambitions set out in the road map, which I think we can all support, and the immediate realities facing farmers. Can the Minister please explain how the Government intend to bridge that gap in practice in the meantime?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

My Lords, there was an enormous number of questions—and, obviously, I do not have an awful lot of time. We are talking about the Statement on the road map; many of the questions are not about the road map and are much broader. As I have only a certain amount of time, I shall concentrate initially on the questions to do with the road map.

Questions were asked about the UK-EU SPS agreement, which is still ongoing. I am sure noble Lords are very aware that the summit was postponed. Currently, we do not have a new date for the summit, but we are continuing with negotiations. Just because the summit has been postponed, that does not mean that we are not continuing to engage with the EU. We are making good progress in a number of areas. Clearly, I am not able to tell the House about the specifics on gene editing, pesticides and so on while negotiations are ongoing, because I would not want to impact them or the outcomes in any way.

The noble Lord, Lord Roborough, said that the environment and farming are being pitted against each other. I dispute that. We have a huge challenge in farming, which the road map is designed to tackle. That is why it is a long-term, 25-year plan. Farming is among the sectors most exposed to climate shocks, environmental degradation and growing resource pressures. So, we have a huge challenge here. How are we supposed to maintain food production and food security, and support profitable farming, while we move towards a lower-impact, market-led, climate-resilient system? That is what this road map is designed to do.

From our nature security assessment, we know that ecosystem degradation is a significant risk to food production. That is why, instead of the environment and farming being pitted against each other, we are trying to bring resilience to farming. We know that environmental resilience means that we have better food security and food production, and that is what the road map is designed to achieve.

We are trying to make farm inspections and environmental permitting more effective. We need to have inspections and permitting because we need to tackle issues such as water pollution, air pollution and problems with emissions. It is really important that we get farm inspections better organised. On a grant that we had a few years ago, we had three separate groups of people come round to inspect the same thing. That is what we have to stop—it is a waste of everyone’s time and money. We need to look at how we regulate and how we manage permits.

The noble Lord talked about land use. The Land Use Framework is an important document, because land management will be absolutely central to our commitment to maintaining domestic food production at at least its current level, while at the same time restoring biodiversity and, as I just mentioned, improving water and air quality and reducing emissions. One of the key things this document does is bring together our different policies. We have an animal welfare policy and the land use framework, as well as the different farming grants and taxations. We need to bring them together, because if farmers are to be able to properly plan for the long-term future, they need to understand how all these different things link together. Having too many different things going on at the same time is not helpful. That is something else we are trying to look at.

The document mentions the water Bill, alongside water pollution and things such as planning for reservoirs. Various things to do with farming and water that we need to be getting right are mentioned in the document.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, talked about the importance of restoring confidence. We absolutely need to do that, but there are so many things we need to do to ensure that farmers have that confidence. They need access to the right skills and advice—again, that is central to our approach. One of the important things about this road map is that we spent a lot of time talking to the sector, right across the board, because we wanted to hear what farmers had to say and what they were concerned about. A consistent message came through from whoever we spoke to: the need for clarity so that they could plan for the future. The overview of the road map is designed to answer that call for clarity so that farmers can plan. They need to know what the Government are looking to achieve and the future direction of travel, so that they can plan with confidence. Ultimately, farmers are businesses; you cannot plan for the future as a business unless you have some form of clarity and security in the future.

The noble Baroness, Lady Grender, also mentioned uplands. Pages 37 and 38 of the document have a specific section on supporting upland farmers, and that includes improving access to schemes and support. One of the bees in my bonnet, as somebody in Cumbria, is that uplands have not had access to support, particularly regarding common land. I have spoken in this Chamber about that before, and I am pleased the noble Baroness raised it, as there is also a commitment in the document to ensure that

“support is accessible, practical and viable for common land”

where improvements are needed. That is why, given that the SFI has not been available for common land due to technical reasons, we have asked the RPA to look at this and try to come up with something that will work for common land. This is something I am very keen to encourage further.

On the breakdown of the budgets and the details on the numbers of different applicants, I think the best thing will be to write to the noble Baroness. She has requested quite a lot of detail, and I would not want to say something off the top of my head that was not entirely accurate.

On small family farms, we have just announced the latest SFI—the Written Statement on this has just come out—and the latest round is designed specifically to target and support smaller farms and those who have not had an agreement. We want to ensure that as many farms as possible are involved in agreements that help support sustainability, improving the environment while allowing them to continue to become more productive as farms.

That leads into the whole discussion around food security. We have to get this right. If we are to have food security for the long term, we have to get our soils right. We have to get our water pollution and our emissions right. This is why it is so important that we bring absolutely everything together.

Thinking about small farms brings me back to the comments made about Dartmoor and, again, uplands. It is important to remember that, as well as the farming road map, we are carrying out other things right now that are designed to make a difference. That comes back to the noble Baroness’s point: this covers 25 years, but what we are doing now? One of the things I am particularly excited about is the role Hilary Cottam will be playing in running pilot schemes in both Dartmoor and Cumbria on how to support those more challenging environments. Hopefully, that will make a real difference. She will be working with local communities as well as with Natural England.

On tenancy, it is great to see the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, in her place; she has done so much on tenancy. “A vibrant tenanted sector” is the headline on page 36. A lot of people do not realise just how large the tenanted sector is. It is incredibly important that it is supported in the way it needs to be. The Tenant Farmers Association welcomed the farming road map. I am looking forward to continuing to work in a constructive way with the noble Baroness on how we can make sure the tenanted sector gets what it needs out of this road map, so that we have long-term security and longer-term tenancies. The average tenancy is now only five years, which is not ideal, to say the least.

I have just about run out of time. The important thing here is that the Government are serious about having proper, long-term, year-on-year policy-making so that, instead of having short-term opportunities, farmers understand where the Government want to go. If farmers do not understand where the Government want to go, what we are trying to achieve and that we want to work with them on such things as innovation and skills—those long-term investment plans—they will never know where they are going to get the next grant or trade agreement from. That is what we are trying to achieve with this.