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Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Danny Kinahan
Main Page: Danny Kinahan (Ulster Unionist Party - South Antrim)Department Debates - View all Danny Kinahan's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(9Â years ago)
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George Eustice
We run a food export forum with industry, which I chair, and we are making progress. We have now helped around 4,000 companies to export overseas, which is four times more than we intended to in the initial strategy.
Danny Kinahan (South Antrim) (UUP)
T9. There seems to be a vast gap between the Government’s ambition for forest and woodland planting and reality. Yesterday, Confor and the Woodland Trust proposed at the all-party group on forestry a target of 7,000 hectares of planting a year. If it is planted sensibly, that could mean 15 million trees a year, but the funding currently available will help deliver only between 2,000 and 2,500 hectares a year. How will the Government work with Confor and the Woodland Trust to achieve more?
Elizabeth Truss
We are planting 22 million trees over the period 2010 to 2020. In the natural capital work that we are doing at the moment, we are looking at the value of trees in the natural environment and the contribution they can make to the economy, through the timber industry, and to things like flood defences. I am sure that that means there will be more in future as well.