Farming

Sarah Dyke Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Dyke (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman). I recommend that he takes his place at Harper Adams University; as a former student, I know how good it is.

I am proud to represent a beautiful rural constituency in Somerset, which has a strong tradition of family-run farms. Indeed, Thomas Hardy called the Blackmore vale, part of which is in my constituency, the “vale of the little dairies”. The farms are managed by successive generations of families, including my own family’s farm.

Farmers are the lifeblood of rural communities. They are the custodians of our beautiful countryside. They care about the environment and work hard day in, day out to produce food for our tables. Yet there is a litany of ways in which the Government have ignored and neglected farmers for far too long. The Prime Minister recently said that he has got the “back” of farmers, but the farmers I speak to tell me that the Government have turned their back on them. The potential Brexit benefit, the promised “public money for public goods” environmental land management scheme, has been horribly botched and delayed, leaving many farmers on the brink. Some do not know if they will be able to survive the next 12 months. If they are forced to leave the industry, they will join the 110,000 farms that have been lost to the industry since 1990.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) mentioned, only one in eight farmers is signed up to the sustainable farming incentive, because there is no incentive to switch. There is little flexibility, meaning many are stuck on lower payment rates. I am not alone in my concern that the SFI may discourage food production over environmental schemes. One farmer in my constituency suggested that they will need to farm nearly double the area they normally farm to achieve the same output alongside meeting their targets under the SFI. Farmers are worried that their central task of producing food is no longer the Government’s central concern. Farmers want to put food on our tables. If they cannot, we will be less food secure and we will need to import more food. I welcome measures to improve our environmental standards, but disincentivising food production will just shift environmental problems.

I agree with the hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Sir Bill Wiggin): our farmers are certainly not revolting—but they are revolting against this woeful Conservative Government. When we Liberal Democrats say we get it, we mean it. Three rural by-election results in as many years prove it is the Liberal Democrats that farmers trust to back British farming. Farmers have told us they need three things: proper funding, workforce planning and the renegotiation of recent trade deals. Only the Liberal Democrats have a real plan to support farmers and rural communities, and that starts with a £1 billion boost to the farming budget so farms can thrive. We need small and medium-sized farms to be given the support they need to boost domestic food production and conserve our environment: things they want to do, but often do not have the time, manpower or budget to do.

The recent announcement of £220 million of funding seems fairly similar to the £227 million the Government have underspent in the past two years’ farming budget. It will not go anywhere near to addressing the crisis that farmers are facing. Farms desperately need workers, yet the seasonal worker visa scheme allows farms to recruit just 45,000 workers from abroad. According to the NFU, farmers say they need nearly double that—around 70,000 workers. We cannot leave our farmers and their crops to languish when we can act to solve the situation.

Lastly, we must urgently renegotiate the free trade agreements that the Government have used to shackle our farmers, disproportionately punishing them for holding some of the very highest standards in the world. The free trade agreements threaten to undercut and undermine our farmers even further, with cheap food hitting the supermarket shelves produced to lower welfare standards. The Farming Community Network ran a survey of over 500 farmers at last year’s LAMMA show, asking them what they are most proud of in their work. They answered: high standards of animal welfare, sustainability, and the strong sense of community in farming. Yet the trade deals threaten that. I once again call for them to be renegotiated, with proper parliamentary scrutiny of each one.

I spend much of my time out on farms. During recess week, I visited farms around Wincanton and Castle Cary in my constituency. Hon. Members may know that our recent recess week was during Mind Your Head Week, run by the Farm Safety Foundation, which raises mental health awareness among farmers. The Government announced a £500,000 boost for charities working on farmers’ mental health. I have written to the Department to request more details of that funding, which were absent from the recent announcement. I look forward to a written response, but I wonder if the Minister might share those details with the House this evening. I am very pleased to hear he was at a roundtable event this afternoon to discuss just that.

I have spoken with charities in this field, such as the Farm Safety Foundation, the Farming Community Network and the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution. They agree that the funding is welcome. The Farm Safety Foundation told me that it might reach 2,500 agricultural students a year if the new funding is given and maintained, but it needs comprehensive action from DEFRA and it needs to be invited to play a role in shaping the policy. We need to fund farmers properly and fund support services, so farmers and the people who interact with them are equipped with the knowledge they need to intervene early. We need clear, simple and targeted communications from DEFRA that recognise the pressures on farmers’ time. I want to see a style guide for DEFRA, similar to the one used by the NHS, to ensure that all users can understand the information clearly. It is unacceptable that DEFRA has been asking charities to simplify and rewrite its communications for it.

Finally, we need a long-term plan for British farming that safeguards our farmers, safeguards our food production and safeguards our environment. The financial pressures and bureaucracy that farmers face need to be eased, allowing them to focus on their core business of farming. Instead, the Government continue to undermine farmers who are at risk of losing their livelihoods. Our farmers and rural communities have been let down and taken for granted by the Conservatives for too long. Food security, environmental sustainability and rural economic prosperity are goals that farmers and the Government should share, but the Government simply do not care or just do not get it.