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Clause 1: Secretary of State’s powers to give financial assistance
12: Clause 1, page 2, line 11, leave out “and better understanding of the environment” and insert—
“(ba) increasing understanding, knowledge and skills relating to the environment, farming, food production, and the impact of climate change on agriculture;”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment allows the Secretary of State to provide specific financial assistance for the work of furthering understanding, knowledge and skills. It differentiates the ‘public good’ resulting from educating and engaging people from that which arises from supporting public access and enjoyment.
My Lords, my interests are as listed in the register. This group covers quite a wide range of topics; I will focus on Amendment 12. The subject of this amendment was referred to in the debate on Tuesday, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and in the winding-up speech by the Minister, which I found very encouraging. In fact, this amendment feels as if we are picking up where we left off on Tuesday evening.
We are, quite correctly, spending a lot of time debating the definition of public goods and what activities should be included within the ELM scheme. There can be absolutely no doubt that the education of our children and helping them to understand the importance of the management of the countryside, the value of farming, the value of the environment and the importance of food and their diet, particularly in the light of the obesity crisis, is a public good and, I suggest, one of the most critically important we will discuss in debating the Bill.
I must declare an interest, in that we created a classroom on our farm and hosted lots of school visits, many from socially deprived areas of Newcastle, supported by the Country Trust and Farm and Countryside Education. This has long been a passion of mine. Some children who visited our farm had never set foot in the countryside. They had never seen an animal, never mind touched one, other than domestic pets. They had no idea how food was produced. The experience is transforming, provided the visit is linked to curriculum-based subjects and is seen as part of an integrated programme. However, this is not just about contributing to academic achievement; it is also about character development and providing an enriching, life-changing experience. More than 19,000 children currently visit farms as classroom visits every year, and many more visit with their parents through events such as Open Farm Sunday.
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 13, which is a very simple amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, has made a simple and correct speech about his amendment, but his amendment does not include a reference to “forestry”. However, forestry is included in the Bill, in Clause 1(1)(b), which refers to “countryside, farmland or woodland”. I believe that it is just as important for people to be educated in forestry as it is for them to be educated about farming, the environment and climate change, and that is why I propose to add these words.
I totally support what the noble Lord, Lord Curry, has just said. When I was a trustee of the Queen Elizabeth Castle of Mey Trust, we had a small area that was set aside for children’s visits in order to educate them. The noble Lord was absolutely right to mention the huge disconnect between rural communities and the urban people of this country. However, there is also a disconnect in rural communities, because there were people in Caithness who were living very close to farmland but did not know how the farms worked or about the management of sheep and cattle and why it was so important in terms of the effect that had on the environment. I beg to move.
My Lords, I am pleased to support Amendment 12, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Curry of Kirkharle, and of course the amendments in the group tabled by my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I also should probably have signed Amendment 13, moved by my colleague the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, but I am afraid that sometimes these amendments just get away from me.
A direct experience of land, farming and wilderness is hugely important to understanding our place as human beings in the world and the impact that we are having on the environment and on our climate. As we begin to make the transition to a more sustainable, ecologically sound society with net-zero carbon emissions, public education is more important than ever. Education is a public good, and Amendment 12 reflects that fact, opening the door to enterprises that combine land management with education and training. I hope that the Minister will take these amendments away and ensure that environmental education and training is not left out of the Bill.
My Lords, I support Amendment 12 and I shall speak to Amendment 13, in the names of my noble friends Lord Caithness and Lord Colgrain. I ought to declare my interest as a member of the National Farmers’ Union.
Education is key to producing future generations of efficient farmers and land managers. While there are excellent world-class agricultural education facilities in this country—such as Harper Adams University in Shropshire and the Royal Agricultural College in Cirencester, to name but two—over the past few years a number of them have closed, such as Wye College, while a number of other establishments have downsized their activities considerably. In my opinion, it is vitally important that we have a world-class agricultural education system for this multifaceted agricultural industry.
I am pleased to have added my name to Amendment 13. I do not believe that “forestry” widens this Bill in the context of agriculture; I believe that forestry is a part and parcel of agriculture and the countryside, and therefore it should be included in the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Curry. I support the amendment.
My Lords, I thoroughly support Amendments 12 and 13. It has been very evident to me, since I moved out from a long career in London to live on the south coast, that even here, where we are surrounded by the most magnificent countryside, there are many people who are not connected to it. It is not enough just to provide opportunities; we have to invite people into the countryside by providing them with really good educational opportunities, particularly aimed at schoolchildren but for adults too. To my mind, that is a vital part of the strategy that underlies this Bill, so I am thoroughly in favour of Amendments 12 and 13.
I have tabled Amendments 32 and 33 in this group, which tackle rather different subjects. Over the next 25 years, we will face huge challenges in agriculture. Agricultural yields have been stagnating for a while, as the results of the last agricultural revolution reach their limits. We need to make some serious progress on increasing yield to have better productivity and to put less pressure on the demand for land. We need to make a lot of progress on biocides, so that we can start to reduce the side-effects that they have on wildlife and on the quality of our environment generally.
There are huge opportunities in these areas. The science of genetics is getting to the point where we can start to look at a whole new generation of crop varieties and indeed different crops, which should enable us to tackle both yield and disease resistance. The advances that we are anticipating in robotics will allow us to use much lower doses of biocides. Indeed, one British company is looking at killing weeds in mechanical ways rather than chemical ways.
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There is a substantial R&D effort on farming systems in this country, which is very important. As the Minister recently mentioned in addressing the House on the question of Xylella, it is clearly important to have fundamental research active in this country. It is all very well spraying crops, but when you have a disease like Xylella that infects all sorts of things, we have to look at things like bacteriophages and introducing weakened varieties of the pest. We will be able to do both those things once we leave the EU and its rather odd restrictive regime. We need that fundamental research to be a part of what we do here.
However, if we are to build an international industry and take a part in what will be an international industry, it is important that we have strong engagement with real farmers. It is not enough to have these things driven through the R&D system. We want the wisdom, inventiveness, resourcefulness and accumulated experience of British farmers to play a part here. It ought to be that we equip farmers not just to be the customers of international R&D but to take part in and commission it and be part of the push for change. I would like to see a good part of the flow, particularly for development beyond research, to come through farmers and for their choices to be what determine who gets the funding. I would like to see the Bill opened up to make that possible.
It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Curry, and I congratulate him on his school for kids to come to; I am sure they had a splendid time. I thoroughly endorse his amendment about education.
I add my support to Amendments 43 and 54 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. They are mostly about localisation, which also has a great part in education and the connection between citizens and food. While most of us understand that local food is a good thing, most of us have very little sense of how local food is produced. I am in Somerset; we have lots of supermarkets around and are just as divorced as you can be in a city. It can be very difficult. There are many reasons for this, but a key one is that local authorities have insufficient cash to provide the essential infrastructure to allow local food economies to flourish.
Here I divert briefly to my own experience of once running a smallholding in Somerset. We went into pig breeding and were lucky enough to have a local abattoir that dealt with our animals in a quick, precise and compassionate way. I remember being completely shocked on my first, nerve-racking trip to the abattoir, with two of my favourite pigs rattling around in the back of the trailer. We were early and had to wait, and I was amazed that outside the door to the slaughter room were four pigs happily snoozing in a companionable heap. This was as stress-free as it could be, the food miles were minimal and I was able to sell the meat in complete confidence that the animals had had a good life and a good death.
There has been a long-term decline in the number of abattoirs in this country. According to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, there were 30,000 in 1930; that dropped to 249 in 2017, a 99% decrease. Of those, 25 are in danger of being shut. The alternative is huge abattoirs where animal welfare is low on the list and the distances need to be extensive and thus increase the stress and cost. I believe you cannot have a local food economy if you do not have a means of taking your animals to market.
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There is a serious disconnect between the 66 million people who live in Britain and what takes place in the countryside. This is of fundamental concern and of the highest priority, in my view. If we are to change attitudes and bridge this chasm, we need to invest in our children, and the Bill is an opportunity to help.
I will not duplicate what was said on Tuesday evening, because the debate was very detailed, but a
“better understanding of the environment”,
as it is worded in the Bill, is too narrow. Understanding the environment is essential, but so is an understanding of farming and food production, diet and health, and climate change. Therefore, “educational access” should be included in the wording. Public access is far broader than just keeping footpaths open and being able to ramble and enjoy our beautiful countryside, as was mentioned on Tuesday. The countryside is also a place for therapy and rehabilitation. Its potential contribution to the nation’s health needs to be given far more prominence and recognised much more by the Department of Health and Social Care. Social prescribing, as mentioned in the debate by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and others, is important. I declare an interest as president of Social Farms & Gardens. Care farming has a huge role to play in this regard. The omission of educational access as defined in the amendment leaves it as discretionary—an ad hoc and passive attitude to this issue, rather than a commitment.
I urge the Government to ensure that public support for public goods includes stand-alone educational access payments for high-quality farm education, rather than just being tied to the higher-tier settlement within the ELM scheme, as I understand is the current plan. That could exclude large numbers of farms which provide an excellent experience for thousands of schoolchildren. We should be even more ambitious and commit to all schoolchildren having the opportunity of at least one meaningful countryside experience. That will require significantly greater farm capacity for school visits than we have at present, not less, which could be the case if support is limited to the higher tier. Perhaps the Minister could reassure us on this point. I beg to move.
Amendment 13 (to Amendment 12)
I urgently recommend that the Government look at funding to restore local abattoirs within reach of most people, to ensure that we have a thriving economy. There are interesting examples globally that we could follow, such as the mobile abattoirs now introduced in France, New Zealand and Australia. We have one based in Nottinghamshire that believes its service can aid animal welfare and meat quality. It is something worth looking at.
The second thing I will talk about in support of the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is county farms. Recent investigations have shown that the number of county farms in England has halved over the last 40 years. Why does this matter? The county farm is a farm owned by the local authority and let out to young and first-time farmers, often at below the market rate. They are a vital first rung on the ladder for farmers in a sector that on the whole has incredibly high up-front capital costs—unless, of course, you are lucky enough to inherit. Through their provision of land and farm buildings, young people can become farmers. With the average age of farmers in this country at 60 and the price of land quite prohibitive, this is something we should really investigate and try to support.
Specifically, the acreage of county farms across England has plummeted from 420,000 in 1977 to just 215,000 now. For instance, Dorset Council just sold six of its county farms, 14% of its entire estate. When Michael Gove was Secretary of State for the Environment, he talked lavishly about equipping a new generation of farmers, but the facts all point in a different direction. You cannot be a farmer if you have nowhere to farm. If we value our farmers, local food and rural economies, community and county farms must not be allowed to slither into obscurity.
Finally, I will speak briefly about Amendment 47. I am a meat eater, but I want to eat meat that has been reared on pastures or in humane ways. Specifically, I do not want to eat chickens or any animals that have been grown in inhumane environments. The UK has come a long way in protecting and preserving standards of animal welfare, but there is one area in which we are not doing well, and that is local chicken production.
In the county of Herefordshire in particular, there is a rapid growth in the intensive chicken industry, which is generating a wave of vast industrial complexes across the landscape. The visual impact is not the only concern. Many environmental organisations are increasingly concerned by the growth and proliferation of these ILUs, particularly the impacts of ammonia, nitrogen deposition and phosphate on biodiversity and human health. These concerns include, but are not limited to, the pollution of water—streams, rivers and ponds. There has been news in the last few weeks of massive algae blooms in the River Wye, which are killing fish.
These chicken farms—which are owned not by British people but by global internationals—affect our health and environment. The companies, such as Cargill, contract with local farmers to put up the factories yet pay only farming rents and rates. These birds lead miserable lives and have miserable deaths, and this is something we should stop. Without a doubt, this leads to less good local practice and lower animal welfare standards. If we want to move towards a sustainable, holistic farming system in which local people can play their part, we have to work against these giant conglomerates.