Agriculture Bill (Third sitting)

Trudy Harrison Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Davies]

Q Thank you—very succinct. Ms Taylor, you are in charge of further schemes. We are way behind at the moment in tree planting in this country. Do you see a way within the Bill of devising a scheme to support the commercial forestry sector over the next 50 to 100 years?

Helen Taylor: As a point of clarity, I am not in charge of that; I am just trying to support DEFRA’s thinking in terms of future farming. There is certainly room within thinking at the moment to consider the value and benefit of forestry in helping to deliver those public goods.

[Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)]

Q Ms Taylor, in your views, you state that the Bill would be a

“starting point for the conversion of the agriculture sector to the one we would like to see.”

In no other industry is knowledge passed on from generation to generation more than in farming. Farmers know their land best. How do you feel that smaller upland and lowland farms will benefit from the Bill, and how will it encourage the next generation of young farmers?

Helen Taylor: I agree that knowledge is passed on in this sector. The potential to recognise the public goods that some of those smaller holdings have been promoting and protecting over the years is an advantage for them in the future. Could you repeat the second part of your question, sorry?

[Trudy Harrison]

Really, it is about how future generations of farmers will feel confident about their potential future on, perhaps, the family farm after the introduction of the Bill. What will it provide for smaller upland and lowland farmers?

Helen Taylor: It is basically the same point again. I hope that recognition of the value of public goods that the farming sector has the potential to deliver will give them more reassurance and more sustainability into the future. Linking it back into the fact that the business itself is dependent on what we might term “natural capital”— clean water, healthy soil in the right place, a healthy atmosphere and a regulated climate—by farming in a sustainable manner, they are buying into their own future assurance as well.

[Trudy Harrison]

Q Does that mean more rewilding?

Helen Taylor: Not necessarily, no. I think rewilding is a specific issue for specific places, and it is not necessarily appropriate across the whole of the UK.

[The Chair]

Q Mr Cross, as a farmer, do you have a view on this?

John Cross: I totally agree with several of the things I have heard about the quality, fertility and productivity of our soils. That is something that some in the industry and some areas of the country have slightly lost focus on, and it is something that I myself am very passionate about.

I do not farm in an area where flooding is a problem, so I do not have any experience there, but designing schemes to encourage or nudge producers into taking a more active role in managing the long-term stability and fertility of their soils has to be the right way to go, because the land’s ability to produce grass or food crops is entirely dependent on its health, structure and organic matter levels. It is the right way to go.