Support for Local Food Infrastructure

Flick Drummond Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson, and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby). She is in fact a vegetarian, so I am pleased to hear her talking about the benefits of eating meat.

I am proud to represent a constituency that produces fantastic, high-quality food—a lot of which is already sold through local retailers. The subject certainly resonates with farmers and growers, as I know from my regular discussions with them. Whenever the media comes across some new way of making food more local and more sustainably produced, inevitably one finds that farmers and producers are ahead of them and already doing it. Many of those businesses provided vital support to their communities during the pandemic. I thank them for that, and I promise them my support in what might be challenging times ahead.

In my constituency we have businesses such as Meonstoke Village Store and Westlands Farm Shop, which sell a wide range of locally sourced produce. We have Middle Farm Produce, a fantastic dairy farm in Cheriton, which has a vending machine so that people can buy directly in the most convenient way. We also have Reeve Butchers and Delicatessen in Clanfield, which makes fantastic sausages; Meon Valley Butchers in Wickham; Buckingham’s Artisan Butchery in West Meon; and many others, selling excellent food.

That links with the real issue in local food—abattoirs. My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) has already mentioned that. I realise that there are factors such as workforce availability, but the key challenge facing the sector is still regulation and Government support. If we want to reduce food miles and support local food, we must help abattoirs. They are facing increasing regulatory costs, which are disproportionately affecting smaller abattoirs. As the regulations increase, the margins reduce and prevent investment. If abattoirs cannot invest, modernise and update effectively, then the small, local abattoirs risk their entire existence. There has to be some recognition of their work and the role they play within local and small supply chains, because without them we will have no local supply chain. I shall be grateful if the Minister would look into that.

There is a frustrating stereotype that farming is somehow negligent or exploitative in how it produces food or manages the countryside. We should address that through education, as well as marketing in the food and farming sector. Getting the food from the farm to the fork with fewer stages and miles between the two points is not only environmentally beneficial, but an insurance against national or global supply chain disruptions. At present, I am hearing from everyone involved in food production, food service and retail about the increasing costs that they are facing. The global challenge resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has direct and local consequences for everyone, but I can assure everyone who is involved in food production in Meon Valley that they have my support and my thanks for everything that they have done to rise to the difficult challenges of recent years.