Agriculture Bill (Third sitting)

Craig Tracey Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)]

Q Clause 1 allows for financial assistance to improve horticultural activities. What specific things would you like to see to support fruit and veg growers?

Jack Ward: There is a list of things. Research and development is massively important—there is no access to ready-made solutions for the problems faced by a lot of relatively small crops, so they are invariably looking for solutions to problems, and research and development is absolutely vital.

There is also capital investment, and a good case in point at the moment is the replacement of seasonal and casual labour. How are we going to manage that? We are going to be looking at robotics—I think that the timescale is 10 years out, but that kind of thing is going to be really important. On skills and labour, which follows on from the whole seasonal labour piece, we probably need to be investing more into labour and encouraging more labour from UK sources for both seasonal and—more importantly—full-time activities.

There is also the issue of productivity and help with technical support. Often, growers are faced with a barrage of issues, from health and safety to issues relating to the groceries supply code of practice. Their ability to absorb every technical wrinkle that they need to know can be quite limited, so I think technical support would be pretty important, too.

Helen Browning: I agree that there is no real clear provision in the Bill for support for R&D. I ask in particular for more support for farmers to do their own research. The work we have done with things like Innovative Farmers has been incredibly successful and very cost-effective in getting both knowledge transfer and trials done more professionally by farmers themselves.

Quite rightly, we talk a lot about fruit and veg, but agro forestry, which might also take us to biomass, nuts and timber production—there was a question in an earlier session about forestry—could be a hugely helpful way of squaring a number of circles. I would like some provision for that.

On the point about skills and advice, it is important to have good advice to assist farmers through the transition they will have to make, but it needs to be de-linked from companies that are trying to sell products to those farmers. Too much advice that farmers take is from companies that have products to sell. We need an independent advisory service available to farmers, so that they are assisted through the big changes they will have to make. We think that farmers have all the skills they need, whether for horticulture or for the delivery of public goods, but a lot of farmers—I am one of them—will have a lot to learn, and we will need some help with that. We need good, independent support.

[Craig Tracey]

Q The existing EU fruit and veg producer organisation regime, while helpful to growers, has flaws and has led to legal disputes. What features would you like in the new scheme?

Jack Ward: Quite a lot of the existing scheme is well worth carrying across. Some of the disciplines that it imposes are good, such as the requirements for a formal structure and for collaboration. The match funding element is good. There is not too much wrong with the categories under which you can claim grant aid, although there are issues about what proportion of the grant falls into which category.

The area that probably needs most attention is the issue around marketing: what is the interpretation of the PO role in marketing? I think I mentioned that we have reached a situation where, when doing online tendering, it is quite difficult for someone to argue that they have done the correct proportion of their activity on marketing when, in fact, it took somebody a morning to prepare an online tender, they won the tender and that was the end of it for a year. It is a question of looking at it and making it more UK-centric, reflecting what happens in the UK as opposed to what happens in some parts of Europe.

[The Chair]

Q I am conscious that the immigration statement in the Chamber has overrun and the Minister has been detained. Ordinarily, I would draw the session to a conclusion immediately, but there is two-way traffic: the Committee has the opportunity to ask you questions, and you have very kindly come in to answer them; but it is also an opportunity for you to bend the Minister’s ear. If there is anything that either of you would like to place on the record, please do so.

Jack Ward: We welcome the provisions on producer organisations. We look forward to a constructive discussion about how we can build on where we have got to and develop something really good that works for growers and consumers in future. I am looking forward to having that discussion. I hope it takes place—it would probably be in several months rather than immediately, but it is really important.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Dunne]

Q Ms Browning, you might want to come back to procurement, but my question relates to your role in the Soil Association. You used the word “biodiversity” earlier. Do you think there is enough in the Bill to allow for R&D and greater understanding of soil composition? My sense is that we have much less understanding of the biology and chemistry of our soil than we do of many other areas of life. Does the Bill facilitate a greater understanding among farmers of what is going on in their land?

Helen Browning: I was surprised that soils were not mentioned explicitly in the list of public goods. As I said earlier, it mentions land but not soil. You are right that, on an R&D front, there is still a lot to learn on the biology side, but there is a lot that is already known that could be implemented quite quickly.

I was surprised because the Minister has been so vocal about soils. I would like to ensure that it is absolutely core within the Bill, that we are specific about that and that we start to set ourselves some targets for reversing the decline in our soil, particularly in the organic matter levels in our soil.

[Craig Tracey]

Q My question follows on nicely from your last point, because, as you say, the Minister has emphasised the importance of soil health. Measures to promote it are covered by the purposes of clause 1(1)(c) —I think it is in the additional provisions. What sort of specific interventions do you think would best deliver improvements in soil health?

Helen Browning: Jack may want to come in on this as well. Generally, it would be about moving into more rotational farming systems, which is usually integrating grassland with growing cover crops. Reducing tillage can sometimes help, although it is not always the way through. Some of the agroforestry opportunities are there too. Rotational farming systems usually improve soil health.

Another is making sure that manures and other inputs are going back on to the soil. One of the things that I have a complete hysteria about is the burning of straw for fuel, when it should be going back to the land—that carbon should be going back to the land. It is about making sure that carbon-based inputs are being recycled into our soils and that we are not damaging those soils by over-heavy machinery, which is a big problem—I am looking forward to the days of little robots running around doing our work for us, rather than all the great machines that are crushing our soils to death—or about leaving soils bare over the winter or even during the summer months.

There is a whole host of well-known factors. A lot of those come together, obviously, within an organic farming system, which is demonstrated to have much higher levels of soil organic matter on average, which is the key indicator that we are looking at in our soil. We know how to do some of those basics.

Moving towards targets for soils at a farm level is difficult, because every soil type is different and will have different capabilities, so we need to be careful about how we use the metrics. We know enough about what husbandry methods we need to be encouraging, however. Good mixed farming is a good place to start.

[Deidre Brock]

Q I have two questions. First, for Mr Ward, with the difficulty in getting a seasonal workforce here nowadays, which we can expect more of in the future, does moving away from subsidising food production to supporting public goods make the production of fruit and vegetables more or less economic? What impact do you think that will have on overall volumes?

Secondly, for the Soil Association, I met your associates in Edinburgh, and they suggested that part of the problem with food security is the lack of security of supply of things such as fertiliser, and that true food security depends on a supply chain. Is there anything in the Bill that suggests to you that food security issues are being addressed?

Jack Ward: Most horticultural production falls outside the common agricultural policy, and traditionally it hasn’t been supported. It is very much about what sort of income you can generate from that production. I think that changes in the CAP and in funding, and the switch to public goods, probably will not impact that very greatly. The demand for seasonal labour will be there all the while people are sufficiently confident to keep investing in production in the UK.