Agriculture Bill

Debate between Earl of Shrewsbury and Lord Lucas

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

[The Earl of Shrewsbury (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I support Amendment 12 and I shall speak to Amendment 13, in the names of my noble friends Lord Caithness and Lord Colgrain. I ought to declare my interest as a member of the National Farmers’ Union.

Education is key to producing future generations of efficient farmers and land managers. While there are excellent world-class agricultural education facilities in this country—such as Harper Adams University in Shropshire and the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, to name but two—over the past few years a number of them have closed, such as Wye College, while a number of other establishments have downsized their activities considerably. In my opinion, it is vitally important that we have a world-class agricultural education system for this multifaceted agricultural industry.

I am pleased to have added my name to Amendment 13. I do not believe that “forestry” widens this Bill in the context of agriculture; I believe that forestry is a part and parcel of agriculture and the countryside, and therefore it should be included in the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Curry. I support the amendment.

[Lord Lucas (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I thoroughly support Amendments 12 and 13. It has been very evident to me, since I moved out from a long career in London to live on the south coast, that even here, where we are surrounded by the most magnificent countryside, there are many people who are not connected to it. It is not enough just to provide opportunities; we have to invite people into the countryside by providing them with really good educational opportunities, particularly aimed at schoolchildren but for adults too. To my mind, that is a vital part of the strategy that underlies this Bill, so I am thoroughly in favour of Amendments 12 and 13.

I have tabled Amendments 32 and 33 in this group, which tackle rather different subjects. Over the next 25 years, we will face huge challenges in agriculture. Agricultural yields have been stagnating for a while, as the results of the last agricultural revolution reach their limits. We need to make some serious progress on increasing yield to have better productivity and to put less pressure on the demand for land. We need to make a lot of progress on biocides, so that we can start to reduce the side-effects that they have on wildlife and on the quality of our environment generally.

There are huge opportunities in these areas. The science of genetics is getting to the point where we can start to look at a whole new generation of crop varieties and indeed different crops, which should enable us to tackle both yield and disease resistance. The advances that we are anticipating in robotics will allow us to use much lower doses of biocides. Indeed, one British company is looking at killing weeds in mechanical ways rather than chemical ways.