Regenerative Farming and Climate Change

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Victoria Prentis)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall) on securing today’s debate. Indeed, it is good to see him on dry land. I have been following his exploits over recess on the trawler that left his constituency, and on which I am told he worked very hard. It is good that he survived that recent experience. I think that he learned a great deal from it, and I am looking forward to hearing all about that in due course.

I know from our many conversations that my hon. Friend is very passionate about regenerative farming as well as about his local fishing industry. He set out the challenges that are facing us at this crossroads of agricultural policy very thoughtfully—if rather quickly. It is true that there is a great deal to do. Part of the problem, which he identified, is that we have to do this at both a strategic level and a very practical and granular level, because that is what farming is all about.

We are introducing a new system that is tailored to the long-term interests of our farmers. As my hon. Friend said, this is the most significant change to farming and land management in 50 years. It is designed to move away from area-based payments or headage-based payments and to deliver a renewed agricultural sector. We are working with farmers at all stages of the design and development of this programme to ensure that it works for them in the future.

Very briefly, our programme is divided into three delivery systems at the moment. The sustainable farming incentive is being piloted actively at the moment, and those pilots are seeking to answer the specifics of many of the questions identified by my hon. Friend. Local nature recovery strategies are all about collaborative working across clusters or groups of farms, perhaps within a geographical area and perhaps to sustain a specific form of biodiversity or a geographical monument that we are trying to protect. We have learned a great deal about how co-working can help with nature recovery. Finally, there are the landscape recovery schemes, which my hon. Friend touched on.

Taken together, these schemes will provide our main delivery mechanism for projects that we hope will mitigate the impacts of climate change, support nature recovery and biodiversity, which is very important to our future plans, and, very importantly, support sustainable farming and the production of food, which is of course what our farmers do.

It is exciting and it is challenging; it is a seven-year transition during which we will work very hard with industry to make sure that we get it right. This is not a normal way of making policy; we are setting ourselves up to fail in some respects, and changing things as we go along—both of which give the civil servant in me pause for reflection. However, I think collaborative working with people such as Jake Freestone—who I am very pleased and proud to congratulate—is the right way to go. I always enjoy reading about the Farmer’s Weekly champions in all sectors, and he is a really great example of what is being done at the moment. We should not forget that a lot of farming is regenerative; I think my hon. Friend’s future relations are great proponents of regenerative farming, in a way that has been happening for many years in many parts of the country. It is important that we bank what is good and learn from it, as well as trying to encourage the great mass of us who farm into these regenerative techniques.

[Jonathan Edwards]

Is the Minister not slightly concerned with the policy we are seeing in trade negotiations with countries from around the world? We are doing deals with countries that have farming systems that seem to be the polar opposite of the vision set out by the hon. Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), and of what the Minister is arguing for now. Is it not a problem that, if we are pursuing a trade policy of that nature, it completely undermines what we are trying to achieve domestically?

[Victoria Prentis]

I am very keen to promote the consumption of British food and drink wherever possible. I was delighted to go to Wales to look at the first geographical indication awarded under our new domestic system, which, I am proud to say, is in the Gower with salt marsh lamb. While it is right, as the hon. Gentleman states, that we have an ambitious trade policy, we need to do everything we can to make sure that truly sustainable food in the country is as local as possible, frankly.

It is worth briefly touching on the way in which our new schemes will support a series of regenerative techniques. My hon. Friend the Member for Totnes mentioned topsoil regeneration. I am particularly excited by the use of winter cover crops: fast-growing plants such as buckwheat, fodder radish or rye, which are established very soon after the harvest and create a green, living cover for the soil. We know now that these techniques reduce soil erosion risks and prevent nutrients from being washed out of the soil. We know that they really improve the living roots within the soil and soil microbiology, which is very much promoted within our new schemes. Integrated pest management—for example, growing flower-rich areas alongside or within arable crops to attract predators for pests—is not pie in the sky; these are real techniques that are being used on real productive farms at the moment. We are doing everything we can to promote that.

We have very exciting examples of general mixed agriculture coming through, such as cultivating crops alongside rearing livestock to fertilise the soil. As a former oilseed rape grower, I am particularly excited by the new learning we have about the winter grazing of sheep, and what that does for pest management. My hon. Friend has heard me enthuse about herbal leys in the past. I feel that these are good, basic techniques that, while old fashioned in some cases, with new technology can really help the way our soil structures work in the future.

We know that we need to refocus to tackle the environmental challenges that are facing us, both on climate change and on biodiversity. We have the opportunity to show the world how this can work. Yes, it is frightening. Yes, it is an experiment. However, we will and can work with industry, slowly, until it works properly.

I like the phrase “spaghetti junction”; it took me straight to Clarkson’s farm, which I had the privilege of visiting just before the recess. Jeremy Clarkson showed me some extremely impressive durum wheat, used for making spaghetti, which he was growing on his farm.

I do think that that programme has been useful in explaining to the general public quite how complicated farming is. It has shown how we, as DEFRA, farmers and, indeed, the general public have to balance all the competing claims on a minute-by-minute basis as we make decisions about how we grow things and what we grow.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) for his review of land-based colleges. He is reporting to the Department for Education, but has kept me closely involved. I also mention in passing the Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture. We are about to launch it formally, and a great deal of work has been going on to get it all organised. Upskilling and training are very much part of this brave new farming world.

We will set out our policy on new entrants formally at some point this winter. We have talked about how we will encourage those who want to retire from the industry to retire. We need to ensure that new entrants can put regenerative practices at the heart of all they do.

I will close with a piece of breaking news. It may not sound exciting to the general public, but for those of us who are involved in regenerative agriculture it is right up there. We laid a written ministerial statement at 9.30 today on the soil health action plan. It will include details on the development of healthy soil indicators and a proper methodology for soil structure monitoring, as well as setting out the basics of a soil health monitoring scheme. Some of the future farming policy pilots have been working on the details of that, and I am pleased that we have got as far as the WMS today.

In summary, I am grateful for this useful debate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes for his interest in this area.