Agriculture Bill (Fifth sitting)

Robert Goodwill Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Dr Drew]

That is exactly the point I am making. We are seeking to strengthen the Bill. We come not to wreck it or to make it impracticable; we come to improve it. We believe that one way the Bill would be improved is by the inclusion of duties. As the hon. Gentleman quite rightly said, there may be a future Government who are less partial towards agriculture, and it is vital that we fetter them. That is why we have legislation.

[Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not think that his amendments would, in fact, be a lawyers charter? It would be open to any pressure group to take the Government to court for not doing something that they said they must do. It would take away the element of judgment from Ministers in any forthcoming Government of whichever colour and give it to the courts.

[Dr Drew]

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman, as much as I respect him—we have had many hours together in this place. The reality is that all we are doing—the Bill will probably last as an Act for the next 50 or 60 years—is including in the Bill a requirement that the Secretary of State must provide financial assistance. That is what legislation is about. It is not: “the Minister might want to do it and they might not want to do it.” This is about ensuring that the Minister is very clear that when they have to introduce these major changes, there are some parts that they must deliver.

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[Kerry McCarthy]

I should begin by declaring that I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on agroecology for sustainable food and farming and have been for some time.

In amendment 72, we call for soil health to be mentioned specifically in the list of public goods. I hope the Minister will be receptive to that—he has made noises that suggest he might be. We know that soil fertility has collapsed in this country. There have been a couple of inquiries in recent years, including a very good one by the Environmental Audit Committee, which looked into soil degradation and the impact on, for example, food productivity and flooding due to run-off.

[Mr Goodwill]

We currently have record wheat yields in this country. Surely that is not evidence of lower soil fertility?

[Kerry McCarthy]

In some places, there is fertile soil. There are measures that one can take—we heard evidence from Helen Browning, I think. I apologise that I am slightly confused about whether I heard evidence in this Bill Committee last week or as a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, because the same people have been giving evidence to both.

There is a lot that we can do to increase biodiversity in fields; for instance, we can take some land out of production, which adds to soil fertility and yield. We heard evidence from Helen Browning of the Soil Association about that.

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[Kerry McCarthy]

I think there is a consensus, at least on the Conservative Front Bench, that soil health is incredibly important and under threat. It should be specifically added to the list of public goods because it is critical to biodiversity, productivity, and mitigating and adapting to climate change—we have not mentioned that yet. The carbon sequestration function of soil is incredibly important. The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) said in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee:

“I just cannot understand why it is not specifically defined in the Bill. There is so much good that is there, but it is underpinned by delivering on actually improving the soil and the huge environmental benefits that flow from that.”

As Vicki Hird from Sustain rightly said, there is also a risk that farmers are getting paid for doing things on one part of the farm or on the edge of a field, but are not protecting the soil elsewhere. That is part of the regulatory process, and bringing it into the fold would make sense to ensure that it is part of the picture. I think we are on the same page, but I would like those three words to be added to the Bill to make clear how important soil is.

I tabled amendment 41 with two other officers from the APPG, the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)—again, the amendment has cross-party support. It was drafted with the help of the Soil Association and Sustain, and is also supported by the Landworkers’ Alliance. Last week, the Minister suggested that he was fairly receptive to the amendment, which suggests that instead of a focus on individual public goods, allowing cherry-picking and just pursuing one or two, there should be a focus on a whole-farm approach, which is by far the best way of delivering many public goods at the same time as producing food.

The “Health and Harmony” consultation paper asked respondents to prioritise a list of public goods. I thought that was the wrong approach, because to prioritise public goods fails to recognise that intersect and that pursuing one public good will help to achieve public goods in another sense. For example, without a reduction in the use of pesticides and without maintaining soil health, water and air quality will suffer. Without output diversification, there will be no improvement to local biodiversity or crop resilience.

The worry is that a limited pot of funding could be focused on edge-of-field nature restoration within an unsustainable wider system. The system should be targeting what happens in the middle of a field, not just around the edges. Approaches to farming such as agro-ecology offer bigger picture approaches that would provide the largest amount of public goods. A whole-farm approach may also be easier to monitor, because the metrics of working out what is going on with individual public goods could be incredibly complicated.

In Committee, Helen Browning said:

“That is why I have been an organic farmer all my life: I do not want to be farming intensively in one place and trying to produce public goods in another… We will still need to do special things in special places so that we can preserve species, manage floods and so on, but the agro-ecological approach should be at the core of our farming system.”––[Official Report, Agriculture Public Bill Committee, 25 October 2018; c. 91.]

Agro-ecology is not just about organic farming. That is one method, but there are also things such as agroforestry, pasture-based livestock systems, integrated pest management, low-input mixed farming and biodynamic agriculture. Agroforestry is a prime example of an innovative approach to farming that produces benefits across several categories of public goods.

The “Ten years for agroecology” project in Europe, which was led by top scientific experts, shows that agro-ecology can address the apparent dilemma of producing adequate quantities of food while protecting biodiversity and natural resources and mitigating climate change. Although it is seen as a bit niche, France has become one of the first industrialised nations to make agro-ecology a central plank of its agriculture policy. In 2014, a law was passed to promote agro-ecological approaches actively. It set a target of implementing such approaches on 200,000 French farms by 2025.

If the French can do it, I dare say there is absolutely no reason why the British cannot. The law also added agro-ecology to the curriculum in agricultural colleges across the country. It has a triple performance: it achieves environmental objectives; it achieves economic objectives by improving yield and efficiency, especially for small and medium-sized family farms; and it has a societal impact, including health and nutritional benefits.

In evidence to the Committee, Ed Hamer of the Landworkers’ Alliance gave an example of how an amendment along such lines would work. He said:

“the integration of whole farm agriculture and agri-ecological principles would incentivise farmers to produce food on the field in addition to introducing ecological focus areas or diversity around field edges.”

He concluded that, with such an amendment,

“it is the farming system itself that delivers the public good.”––[Official Report, Agriculture Public Bill Committee, 25 October 2018; c. 116, Q160.]

The Minister was encouraging about that, saying that the Government are considering empowering agro-ecology under clause 1. Such farming methods ought to become far more mainstream. Since the Secretary of State first came up with the “public money for public goods” approach, I have said that I think he is on the right page and is doing the right thing. I just think he could go a bit further to ensure the Bill is about restoring resistant services, safeguarding our long-term food security and protecting the environment.

[Mr Goodwill]

I oppose amendment 72, not because I am against enhancing soil health in our country, but because I believe the amendment would act against some of our other objectives. As a farmer I manage soil, and as part of my agriculture degree I spent a year studying soil science. Although it is easy to define animal health—it is the absence of disease, or a state in which production from the animal is maximised—it is much more difficult to define soil health. As an intensive arable farmer, I know that the healthiest soil is the most productive soil. Therefore, levels of nutrients—nitrogen phosphate, potash and sulphur—should be optimised to produce optimal soil health. but we need other elements within the soil as well. The cation-exchange capacity must be optimised through the use of lime and other soil treatments so those nutrients are available. The soil also needs to have the correct flocculation status, so that nutrients and roots can travel through it and drainage is optimised.

It is easy to define what productive, healthy soil is, but for some of the objectives in the Bill we need less than optimal soil health status. For example, all farmers agree that the most optimal way to enhance soil health is to have drainage schemes in place, but we have other agri-environmental schemes to try to prevent flooding, such as flood plains and areas of reed beds. Innovative schemes are happening on the North Yorkshire moors above Pickering, where the soil health is not optimised because that land is flooded deliberately to enable the delivery of those schemes.

Similarly, the North Yorkshire moors are a valuable habitat. The land is moor land because the soil is particularly acid and the soil health is bad—bad for growing most things apart from heather. Measures that could be put in place to enhance soil health there could actually act against enhancing that particular environment. We need to look at how we help farmers to manage their farms across the board. Some of their land may well be managed in a way that optimises soil health and production, but elsewhere soil health should deliberately not be enhanced, to allow certain species and habitats to develop precisely because that soil is flooded, acidified or not optimised for production.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I observe that the amendment asks that health soil be included in a list of things to which the Secretary of State “may” give financial assistance, not “must”. The right hon. Gentleman would not need to worry so much if he accepted the amendment.

[Mr Goodwill]

Yes, but we have recorded that it is the policy of the hon. Lady’s party to put “must” in the Bill, which will no doubt be introduced in the Lords.

[Jenny Chapman]

The right hon. Gentleman needs to make his mind up.

[Mr Goodwill]

The point I am trying to make is that it is very difficult to define enhanced soil health. Unlike animal health, where it is very easy to see whether an animal is healthy or not, there are a number of objectives, for example, looking at organic matter in the soil and the use of slurries.

Although many would wish to take measures to improve the organic matter in soils, there are downsides, particularly looking at nitrates. The Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sit, looked at nitrates in water and soils. Many of the problems with high levels of nitrates, which can lead to eutrophication in watercourses and the sea, in some cases, are due to high nutrient and nitrate levels being applied to the soil, which can be associated with organic fertilisers. My view is that this is an unnecessary amendment.

Soil health is best left to farmers. If we can create the situation where farmers manage their farms correctly, they will enhance soil health in those areas where they wish to maximise production but they might deliberately degrade soil health in order to encourage species that thrive in waterlogged, acidic and other soils. Although I can understand the motives behind the amendment, I do not believe it would achieve the intended objectives.

[Martin Whitfield]

First, I should point out that I have recently been elected chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the timber industries. I support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East. The quality of soil sits at the foundation of farming and agriculture.

I listened to the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby, but I think he reads too much into the amendment. At the end of the day, we are looking for an improvement in the health of the soil in the area where it is found; there is no intention to overdo the moor lands into high-growth, high-productivity areas. That may well not be a measure of soil health within an area. With great respect, I feel that the right hon. Gentleman is reading far too much into the intention behind the amendment.

On the nature of the Bill and the word “may”, it will always rest with the Secretary of State whether financial support would be given. The health of the soil was raised in the evidence session by a significant number of people, and it sits at the foundation of farming. There is a need to ensure that the soil that we pass on to those who come after us is in the best condition that the farmer feels is right for his land. Farmers are the experts, but to rely solely on the farmer, without being able to give support where necessary, would remove the need for the Bill. There is a requirement for the Bill, however, and for farmers in some areas to have support.

One thing the Minister should address is the health and quality of the soil and what the soil is doing. In my constituency of East Lothian, we are blessed with very fertile volcanic soil and the production rates are phenomenal. They are dealt with and handled with great care and expertise by the farmers. In other areas of Scotland and the UK, however, the soil quality is much lower. That needs to be addressed, and the farmers who work the land, whether for sheep or for culture, require support to do that. Soil plays a greater role than as simply the material out of which crops are grown. The carbon capture element is fundamental to the calculations that need to be made.

Amendment 72 would make a small change, but a significant one. It would place in the Bill the material that is most fundamental to agriculture: soil.

[Dr Drew]

I support amendments 72 and 41, but I shall speak to amendment 49. The Bill is about improving the environmental quality of our agriculture, and there is no better way of doing that than ensuring that we improve soil, water use and the development of our countryside to provide the most efficient agriculture. Those issues will take up much of our time on this Committee.

I make it clear that amendment 49 comes from the Uplands Alliance, which has some concerns about how it will fare once the Bill is passed unless some account is taken of the uplands. We all know how difficult it is to farm in the uplands; I am afraid that, whatever the Bill does, it will not make it much easier. Sheep farmers are largely farming on the margins. We will be careful to try to rule out anything that would undermine their ability to get a fair price for their sheepmeat. We are wary of any free trade deal with certain parts of the world, and we make no apology for making that argument.

The Uplands Alliance’s point is that the easiest way of dealing with environmental degradation in the uplands is rewilding, recarbonisation and allowing the land to go back to nature, but of course that does not give anyone a living. The people concerned do not have a living at the moment; they may get some money through direct environmental payments, but those are effectively a subsidy to keep them on the land.

Why does this matter? It matters not only because upland farmers deserve our support, but because this is about our kept landscape. Rewilding the whole uplands landscape may be attractive, but will it draw in the tourists? Will it give us a sustainable rural community? I suspect not. If we want these people to carry on farming, we have to allow for a balance between the environmental payments that they will be eligible for and their ability to farm at a profit, which can be done only if we invest in them.

Amendment 49 is important because it looks at the reality. I do not happen to represent any upland areas, but some hon. Members present do, so in a sense I am speaking on their behalf. They will know exactly what I am talking about.

[Mr Goodwill]

My constituency takes in two thirds of the North Yorkshire moors. The hon. Gentleman spoke about rewilding, which is precisely what would happen if the heather moor land was not managed properly. People would not be happy to see that, because they see the heather moor land as a fragile environment that they want to sustain as a public good.

[Dr Drew]

That is exactly why we must balance the environmental aspects of the Bill with the reality of farming in those areas. I am trying to identify the issue that the Uplands Alliance asked us to address in the amendment, which is about looking at traditional and sustainable forms of agriculture. As has been said, agro-ecology is a new term, but in many respects it is revisiting the past; it is about how we have always tended to consider farming in certain parts of the world as traditional. How we maintain that landscape—a farmed and managed landscape—depends on a relationship between what is farmed and the environment being managed by those farmers.

The alternative is rewilding or having much larger holdings. In essence, we would end up ranching those holdings; they would have to be on such a large scale because the money would not be there in any other way. That would be deleterious to our countryside, and many farmers who want to remain would have to be moved off the land.

It is important that we have this debate. I support the important agro-ecological points of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East, because we are giving the Bill some substance. We disagree with the Government: we need examples of how such agricultural improvement will work and how to deliver it. Many others support the amendments, as my hon. Friend said, such as the Soil Association. In its written evidence, which we have all looked at, the Landworkers’ Alliance very much encouraged this direction of travel, to see how agriculture can be improved, made sustainable and meet our sustainable development goals. We will talk in detail later about climate change, which is central to this debate.

I support my hon. Friend’s amendments, and I make no apology for saying that they improve, as we said we would, the status and clarity of the Bill on how agriculture should move. I hope the Government will look positively at what we are trying to do.

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[Dr Drew]

The nature of the food we produce is another area of the Bill that needs to be improved and strengthened. This is the Agriculture Bill—although, some say that there is not enough agriculture in it—and it should take, by every stretch of the imagination, more account of access to food and the improved quality and distribution of that food. We pass legislation to try to improve the current situation.

Many of us on this side feel that the use of food banks, as well as the poor quality of food and problems with access to food, are a tragedy and a scandal. We are not here to get involved in the politics of that, but to look at the practicalities of ways in which we can help. We would all acknowledge that the distribution of food is as much of a problem as the production of food, which is why organisations such as FareShare are so important; they work with food producers to distribute food to people who cannot afford to buy it through the normal market mechanism. Recognising those problems is important to us, both as Labour politicians and as human beings. This is the appropriate part of the Bill for amendment 51.

The biggest single challenge facing the NHS is obesity, and we need to do something about that in the Bill—it may be called the Agriculture Bill, but it is also about food. We ask the Government at least to acknowledge that this is an issue worthy of discussion, debate and improvement.

[Mr Goodwill]

Healthy and unhealthy people shop at the same supermarkets. Is it not their choices that make the difference to their health, rather than the food on the shelves?

[Dr Drew]

That is an interesting view, but it depends on what food is on the shelves. Maybe I have misled the right hon. Gentleman, because it is not just about supermarkets and the retail end; it is also about fast-food business, which has to be part of today’s debate on the food we produce, who buys it, and how we can help them if they cannot afford it.