Lord Whitty
Main Page: Lord Whitty (Labour - Life peer)
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Baroness is quite right that our peatlands will play a crucial role as part of our nature-based solutions to climate change here in the UK. That is why the Government have put in additional funding to restoring both peatlands and forests to help with carbon capture in a nature-based way.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, one of the causes of the loss of biodiversity in Britain is the overuse of chemical fertilisers and chemical pesticides. What are the Government doing to find alternatives that enable us to produce food in a way which does not destroy our biodiversity?
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Lord is quite right. I believe that Defra made some announcements this week about looking at the inputs to agriculture in the context of rising costs there, and the potential for a mutually beneficial solution in terms of finding more natural solutions to some of those inputs. As part of our environmental land management scheme, we will also promote the maintenance of healthy soils. There are two soil standards within the sustainable farming incentive launching in 2022.