Dairy Industry Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Sarah Newton
Main Page: Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)Department Debates - View all Sarah Newton's debates with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I will try my best, Sir Roger.
Tamara Hooper is a constituent of mine who farms some land that I am very fond of. It is next to the farm that my godfather farmed, and her tale is of the situation faced by many farmers in my constituency, who have tried over generations to keep their way of life and first-class dairy farms going. Their huge skill in raising stock and looking after them and the land is passed down over generations; it is not something that people learn overnight.
Tamara Hooper is currently being paid 24.81p a litre by Arla. That is simply unsustainable. The 48 companies that rely on her farm will go out of business unless we do something about it. In my lifetime, I have seen the number of dairy farms in my constituency drop like a stone to the handful that remain. Some enterprising Cornish farmers have been able to develop cheeses, ice creams, milks and butters. There are many household names that people now find in supermarkets, which is great. I hope that many more of them will be supported to do that, but right now, Tamara and her family face going out of business. It takes time for people to set up new relationships and sell their milk directly. It takes time for people to train themselves as a cheesemaker, and they have simply run out of time.
I support all the work that has been done by the Select Committee and in the charter proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans), which points to a series of practical things that the Government can do to intervene in a broken market. We have to intervene so that when the upturn that we all expect and anticipate comes, we will still have farms and farmers able to meet that opportunity. Just as we have a strategy for national energy security, we need a proper strategy for farming and food security, because that is just as important. I urge the Minister to take on board the ideas that we have come up with this morning and take urgent action to fix the broken market.