Future of Farming

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I will focus my comments on areas where I think we can achieve a degree of cross-party agreement. I have already heard agreement that farmers are the stewards of the land. We can agree that farming is a diverse sector, and farmers as a group are very diverse, which we need to bear in mind whenever we make policy.

I would like to discuss four issues that farmers in my North Herefordshire constituency have raised with me. First, farmers need long-term policy certainty. The hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) talked about record investment in farming, but in real terms it is effectively static. What we need is a significant ramping up of Government support for the farming sector. The Nature Friendly Farming Network has called for a doubling of the farming budget, which is a call that the Green party strongly supports. We need far more investment in environmental land management schemes, as well as the long-term certainty that farmers need to make decisions to put land into those schemes.

Secondly, farmers tell me that they want better regulation of the food sector, such as a more even balance of power between farmers and supermarkets. Too many of them feel under the cosh as price takers, not price makers. That is a real problem. There is also the phenomenon of farmwashing, whereby supermarkets pretend that their food is grown on lovely family farms all over the UK when, in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. We need clear Government regulation on that.

The third issue, which has already been mentioned, relates to the Government’s role in public procurement. I am glad the Government are taking some initiative on that, but there is far more that could be done, particularly to ensure that schools provide universal free school meals based on the procurement of local, sustainably grown food—