Agriculture Bill

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 9th July 2020 Lords Chamber

I believe that nature-friendly farming is central to farming’s long-term survival. To give just one example, we know that, in many places in the UK, soils have been impoverished to the extent that they will support only a limited number of future harvests. Agroecological farming protects the future sustainability of soils, including their biodiversity, while delivering food. It was heartbreaking to hear the figures for the reduction in organic farming and food that the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, laid out so vividly. Can the Minister tell us how farms and land managers who want to implement agroecological principles will be supported from the funding schemes under the Bill and how more farmers and land managers can be encouraged to do so?

[Baroness Meacher (CB) [V]]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly in support of Amendment 40, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and Amendment 41, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, to which I added my name—it is unfortunate that he is speaking after me. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has already said that trees offer a safe, nature-friendly and relatively cheap way to soak up the carbon that we urgently need to sequester if we are to meet our legal climate obligations. Trees have an extraordinary range of other benefits that he also set out. I certainly do not want to repeat what he had to say and what the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, might also say. In view of the extraordinary qualities of trees and the range of their benefits, I hope Ministers will take this very seriously and accept the principle of what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and, somewhat differently, the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, are putting forward.

[The Earl of Dundee [V]]

My Lords, I support and will first comment on Amendment 97, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and others. The new and welcome direction pointed by the Bill is furthering the joint aims of healthy food production and good environmental land management. Whole-farm agroecological systems are central to this. They should therefore be clearly described. That is what Amendment 97 would do.

Following this, and for the same reason of its central consistency with the Bill, I am in favour of Amendment 42, which would ensure that financial assistance is given for whole-farm agroecological systems. I also support Amendment 48, which would properly recompense farmers more than the Bill currently does for converting to organic and ecologically sustainable systems. I am in favour of Amendment 84, on encouraging agroforestry, and Amendment 96, which seeks better to reward nature-friendly farms. I agree with Amendment 120 about monitored targets for integrated pest management, and equally with Amendment 217, which advocates improved productivity programmes related to soil analysis.

Amendment 41 in my name relates directly to Amendment 40 on agroforestry, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. It encourages a connection between afforestation and agroforestry. Its purpose is for agroforestry development to contribute towards afforestation targets. Although most of the target of 30 million trees which the Government have committed to plant will apply to upland areas, through agroforestry an increasing proportion could be planted on lower ground, which is otherwise, and for good reason, often the sole preserve of agricultural production. Conversely, agroforestry itself, where deployed on low ground, can assist afforestation targets, since it maintains fields of agricultural crops, with trees planted at certain wide intervals between them.

Through agroforestry, as carried out on United Kingdom farmland, it is estimated that 920 million trees could be planted in fields, yet this would cause agricultural output to reduce by only 7%.