Agriculture: Sustainable Intensification and Metrics

Rebecca Pow Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is, as ever, a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) on bringing this subject forward. The Minister for Farming, Fisheries and Food, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), would have been responding to the debate, but she is at the National Farmers Union conference, so I am standing in. I am very happy to do so, because the debate touches on so much of what I deal with as the Environment Minister. I will make some points about that as I go along.

We have a great deal of synergy here; I do not really think that we are arguing, as such, about a lot of the points that have been raised. I want to be clear from the outset that everything that I do in DEFRA is science-led—I can absolutely assure hon. Members of that. I sometimes ask officials, “Have we got to do another bit of data gathering and assessment?” The answer is yes, we do, because our work has to be science-focused; we have to have evidence for what we do and how we make policy.

I also want to assure hon. Members that we are not going backwards. Looking after our soil in the way that we hope farmers will in the future is not going backwards; it is going forwards. We will go forwards—yes, with lots of the old ethos and ideas, but also with a great deal of innovation and technology behind us. I want to make that clear at the start.

Food production really matters in this country, and it is at the heart of our levelling-up agenda. The “United Kingdom Food Security Report” set out that we produce 60% of our food supply need, and 74% of foods we can produce for all or part of the year. We are almost 100% self-sufficient in certain things, including poultry, eggs and—weirdly—swedes. We have a very good track record. As we work to deliver our rightly ambitious and world-leading commitments to halt the decline of nature—something to which we are legally committed—and reach net zero, it is critical that we are mindful of food security. However, we need to look at our land and land use strategically; I think that my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer pointed that out himself.

As the Environment Minister, I have a solid background in farming and food production, but also in the environment. For me, the two things have never been separated, and indeed they should never be separated. That means that supporting and enabling sustainable intensification, land sharing and land use change are all in the mix. We have to have sustainable food production, and I think my hon. Friend agrees. Of course, producing sustainable, healthy food is inextricably linked to having a healthy environment.

All of DEFRA’s policy programmes in the agricultural transition plan are informed and supported by evidence generated by and developed in partnership with our world-leading UK research institutes, as I am sure my hon. Friend is aware. Alongside our stakeholders—including, as he said, environmental non-governmental organisations, whose expertise, knowledge and passion we value—we also engage with academia, the science community and industry in developing programmes to ensure that our policies are supported by robust evidence; of course, that includes the chief scientific adviser.

DEFRA works in partnership with research councils, other Departments and agencies via the well-established UK Research and Innovation-led global food security programme, and sets the direction of the £90 million UKRI-led transforming food production challenge fund. More recently, we launched the farming innovation pathways competition under the wider farming innovation programme, through which we are funding projects including a fruit-scouting robot, the use of black fly as a feed alternative, and new approaches to tackling pests and pathogens on vegetables without the use of pesticides. We are, without a shadow of a doubt, moving away from reliance on chemical pesticides. A huge amount of data gathering, research and work is going into that.

Evidence plays a critical role in the development, monitoring and evaluation of our policy programmes. We rely on evaluation and monitoring to work out whether the tests, trials and pilots that we are constantly running are doing the right thing, and whether we should include those things in our policies. Evidence has been vital in underpinning the content of our sustainable farming incentive standards and the development of the net zero strategy in future farming and so forth.

Our thinking has evolved with the evidence, and it is clear that we need to pursue a sensitive approach to this matter. As such, we will invest in new research on land use and agricultural systems as a major strand of the £75 million allocated to research and development in DEFRA sectors announced in the net zero strategy. That investment will build on previous research—including the £4.5 million investment in the sustainable intensification research platform that my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer referred to—and continue to address the pressures identified in Sir John Beddington’s 2011 foresight report. That really important document has informed so much of what we are doing now; people might think it has been forgotten, but it most certainly has not.

DEFRA directly funds innovative research on sustainable intensification and transformational approaches in agrifood protection via our core agrifood research programmes. Of course, intensification may not be appropriate for all settings, particularly in areas that are nature sensitive or of biodiversity value; in such areas, regenerative and agroecological approaches might be more suitable. As recognised by Henry Dimbleby in his independent review, we need to combine sustainable intensification and regenerative approaches to agriculture to meet the objectives of our 25-year environment plan while maintaining the secure and healthy food supplies that we need.

Although we have not touched on it in this debate, we must not forget water. We need a supply of water that is not only resilient and sustainable—agriculture needs that, of course—but clean and of good quality. All of this also impacts on agricultural management practices—what farmers do on the ground to produce the food we need. It is all related. As well as long-term food security, many of our schemes are looking at what I call the vital building blocks: healthy soil, water and a biodiverse ecosystem. If we do not get those right, we cannot produce any food at all. My hon. Friend knows my feelings about soil and the testing that will go with those soil standards.

I am running out of time, so let me mention briefly that we are doing a lot of data gathering. The natural capital and ecosystem assessment will inform an awful lot of what we do. We are also working closely with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology.

My hon. Friend asked about the US global initiative, which we are looking at. We have started a dialogue with Washington to identify the best way the UK can bring knowledge to the roundtable that he mentioned. I am sure that the Farming Minister would be happy to meet him—as would I, if that would be helpful. I think we are singing from the same hymn sheet, but we need to get that clear and we need to go forward working together.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).