Farming

Paul Howell Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)]

When thinking of Sedgefield, I am sure people have the perception—due, in particular, to one of my predecessors—that we are a collection of ex-mining villages and little else. Although I am constantly inspired by many within my mining villages, Sedgefield is in fact a particularly diverse constituency, covering about 250 square miles, with many farmers operating amazing businesses. I have been delighted to engage with many of them since well before the day I was elected. As my wife is the daughter of a Yorkshire farmer, I have had an insight into their world for about 40 years. I do not have the level of insight of the two former Secretaries of State who have spoken—my right hon. Friends the Members for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) and for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—but the world of our farmers is particularly challenging at the moment, and I would like to take some time to outline points that they have raised with me.

When I asked Mark Dent, a farmer who also runs the Darlington Farmers Auction Mart in my constituency, for a contribution for today, he said to me:

“I wouldn’t know where to start, Paul”.

I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) empathises, because he has had conversations with him too. Mark Dent said:

“there are so many issues and challenges facing the industry”.

I want to get those issues in front of the Minister. Mark continued:

“These include access to European markets, cost of inputs, cost of machinery, cheaper imports, interest rates, successive years of challenging weather topped off with the loss of direct payments”—

that is the way the rant went.

“With an ageing demographic in the farmer population, many are scaling back as it’s no longer viable and the young can’t afford to get a start with the cost of everything, land and rented land being the main stumbling block as that is now being driven by the new environmental schemes and the historic tax haven for millionaire businessmen who don’t farm themselves.

We are sleepwalking into a food security problem.

I do applaud the government for their recent efforts, but using farming to meet their net zero targets is not the answer if they want food and at a price everyone can afford.

You can’t have cheap food without…support with all the cost challenges farmers face.

Thinking throwing a bit of money at environmental schemes (which is more land coming out of food production) will be enough to subsidise necessary food production is naive. Farmers will take the easy, most cost-effective option.”

The Hart family from Foxton said:

“The last thing English Farmers want is the Welsh Labour System imposed on them if we lose the election. Taking 20% of land out, 10% for the environment and 10% for trees is unrealistic.

Plus, the new rules governing holiday lets make a mockery of diversifying business. The whole point of farmers making holiday lets is to supplement income. But if the new laws governing second homes and holiday lets come into force, it could make it unrealistic to carry on.

In Wales farms cannot afford in many cases to carry on with holiday lets under the new rules imposed on them. Farmers would prefer to farm their land for their income.”

They said that because farm incomes are at a historic low, there is nothing left

“by the time you have paid the bank back, your costs for producing your product and hopefully paying yourself.

This impacts the wider farming world of machinery sales and repairs. If farms cannot afford new investment and machines, we lose skilled mechanics, and companies are closing due to lack of sales”—

it goes down the supply chain. They continued:

“The knock-on effect is far larger than just what stops at the farm gate. A generation of farmers will be lost at the rate the industry is declining”,

and that these days more and more farmers diversify

“to supplement the family income or are involved with developing and running holiday lets, camp sites, farm shops, teashops etc to try and break even let alone make a profit.”

The Harts also said:

“There is too much red tape.”

One of their big concerns is that cheap foreign imports get labelled as British because they are processed here. That has to be stopped; we need to be clear what is and is not British food. They said:

“As a nation we need to be able to feed ourselves, we need to look carefully at how we use our land, regarding building wind, and solar farms.

There are so many concerns around the resilience of our farming sector, and we need to ensure environmental power development is not on good farmland.”

The Lawsons from Bishopton told me:

“There are a lot of farmers being tempted into changing productive farmland into nutrient neutrality or biodiversity net gain credits and taking bulk payments from developers. This land will then not be able to be used for growing food for either the next 80 or 30 years respectively.”

Should we be worried? What is the plan for feeding our population? Farmers are doing that because they cannot make a return on the land by keeping it in agricultural use. Farmers enjoy farming, but a lot of them need to change just to survive. We should do all we can to deliver sustainable economics to our farmers.

Steven Brown from Sedgefield asked me:

“In view of the increased levy payable to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, will more of the budget be allocated to advertising UK food production rather than research and development?”

He mentioned

“the need for a reduction in red tape, a reduction in duplication of farm assurance schemes and better returns for UK farmers for quality products as opposed to cheaper imports of inferior products.”

Billy Maughan farms on the border between my constituency and Bishop Auckland. He has cattle, arable and free-range layers, and is the NFU council delegate. He said to me:

“There are a couple of points around Defra capacity…Firstly, it is around capacity for the Animal and Plant Health Agency to manage notifiable disease outbreaks. Avian influenza is still the single biggest risk to our business. There are cases of Bluetongue in the country that could affect our cattle, and my fellow farmers with pigs are hugely concerned about the risk of African Swine Flu getting into the country. Is there sufficient contingency planning in place to cope with a large-scale outbreak of one or more of these diseases?

Secondly, it is about the resources within Defra to roll out the new SFI standards due this summer. Will they be delayed or announced on time? Also, is there enough capacity to process the applications as the number of applications increases?”

Finally, Anna Simpson, the NFU county advisor, said we need to ensure that

“all new policies and regulations that impact agricultural and horticultural businesses undergo a food security impact assessment”,

and that we need

“a seamless transition to new environmental schemes that are open to all farmers and growers”

and

“public access to the countryside to be managed responsibly whilst recognising that much of it is an active working environment.”

She also said that we need to

“implement the recommendations of the Rock Review into agricultural tenancies, to support the long-term resilience of a tenanted sector, delivering on food production and environmental goals”

and must have

“a consistent and coordinated response to rural crime across government and police forces.”

In summary, my farming community is concerned about: the burden of red tape; what it sees as the abuse of schemes that make it look to the public like they are buying British when the product is only processed in the UK; the capacity of APHA to support the industry; and the unintended consequences of other policies on the farming community. It is particularly concerned that well-meaning environmental initiatives are impacting on the resilience of farming, and it is absolutely terrified that the Welsh model could come to England.

Food security, like many other areas of UK resilience, was brought into sharp focus by the covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine. It is critical that we do all we can to support our farmers in delivering UK resilience. There is no one more interested and engaged in the land than our farmers, and we must trust them to look after it.