Asked by
To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made in
assisting British farmers to meet net zero challenges.
(CB)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on
the Order Paper. In doing so, I declare my farming interests as
set out in the register.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs () (Con)
My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the
register. Farmers are central to delivering the Government’s
environmental and climate targets, alongside their core role as
food producers. The net-zero growth plan, government food
strategy and environmental improvement plan set out a range of
specific improvements to support farmers on their journey to net
zero. Environmental land management is the foundation of our new
approach. Our schemes will pay for sustainable farming practices,
which are an important step towards achieving our net-zero
goals.
(CB)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his response and I appreciate
the progress being made, but years on from the passing of the
Agriculture Act and the Environment Act, farm owners and
landowners are constrained by the absence of many of the basic
details on the new schemes. Despite many questions and
consultations, we still have no decisions on the tax implications
for income tax, VAT and inheritance tax. Current uncertainty over
the taxation impacts of ELMS, biodiversity net gain and carbon
farming in general is a major obstacle for farmers to take up
these schemes. This is exacerbated by the need to commit to 30
years or more for BNG. In successful farming, timeliness is
godliness. Will the Minister introduce this mantra to Defra and
its dealings with the Treasury, and announce the policy?
(Con)
I thank the noble Lord. We are doing a lot with farmers to
encourage them to farm sustainably, in a way that locks up carbon
and rewards them for doing so. I refer him to Nature Markets: A
Framework for Scaling Up Private Investment in Nature Recovery
and Sustainable Farming, which shows land managers precisely how
they can access high-integrity carbon and biodiversity credits
markets, which will provide income for them and do what we want;
and to our environmental land management schemes, which will lock
up carbon. The noble Lord asked a specific question on tax. We
have resolved some of the issues and have ongoing discussions
with the Treasury. It is vital that we incentivise farmers in
every way to help them hit net zero and help us as a society.
(Con)
My Lords, I pay tribute to Minette Batters, the current president
of the National Farmers’ Union, who is in her last year in that
post. The challenges of the farming industry have been enormous
in recent years, not only in relation to net zero but much more
widely. Can the Minister therefore say today that assistance will
be given whenever necessary to encourage more people to enter the
farming profession, and to help those farmers who meet these
challenges day in, day out?
(Con)
I second my noble friend’s kind words about Minette Batters; she
has been an extraordinary leader of the farming sector. In a
single act of great courage and determination, she committed
English farming under her leadership to get to net zero by 2040.
That is a challenge for the Government and for her members, and
we are doing everything we can to ensure that the NFU’s ambition
and the Government’s align.
(LD)
The basic payment scheme is due to be wound down next year and,
as I understand it, the cross-compliance rules, such as not
maintaining hedgerows between 1 March and 31 August to enable
nesting birds and other wildlife to thrive, may go. Can the
Minister tell us which, if any, of these cross-compliance rules
will be retained? Does he agree that there is little point in
chasing carbon goals if our countryside is dead and silent?
(Con)
The noble Baroness says something is so when it is not. There are
so many rules to prevent farmers removing hedgerows. There are
cross-compliance measures within ELMS, which will replace the
basic payment scheme. I do not know where she got that
information, and I wish other members of her party at the other
end would stop saying this because it is not true.
of Ullock (Lab)
I, too, pay tribute to Minette Batters. She has been an
extraordinary leader, and these Benches support all the work she
has done to bring farming towards net zero. We know that the use
of smart technologies and more efficient equipment can help
farmers reduce their environmental impact, whether that is
through reduced emissions, improved yields or reducing damage to
natural habitats. However, many farmers are struggling to make
ends meet and the cost of borrowing has increased greatly in
recent times, which makes new equipment out of reach financially
for many farmers. What assessment have the Government made of the
potential role for farming co-operatives in acquiring and sharing
such equipment, and what role would the Minister see for his
department in this area?
(Con)
There has been a great increase in machinery rings, whereby
farmers work together to share equipment. That has reduced their
fixed costs and assisted with their working capital. Defra is
assisting farmers through our £270 million Farm Innovation Fund,
including £15 million to assist farmers in putting solar panels
on their barns. However, there is much more we can do to help
innovation. Earlier my noble friend made a point about
encouraging younger people into farming, who understand the
technologies that are available and embrace them. They need to
feel that they are assisted by government and the agricultural
education sector, and that there are grants available to help
them work together to use innovations that reduce their carbon
footprint but also help with their bottom line.
(CB)
My Lords, I want to ask a specific question of detail on carbon.
I am increasingly receiving messages of concern about the lack of
a national standard in the calculation of carbon. Different
farming systems and different models are producing different
results. The industry is crying out for clarity. We need a
national standard for the calculation of carbon on different
livestock systems but also for the calculation of soil carbon.
What is the department doing to try to resolve this dynamic?
(Con)
The noble Lord has great experience in this field. He is right
that there are a great many tools available for use by farmers
and their advisers to support on-farm calculations and audits.
The Government and I share his concern because a number of those
tools differ widely in their complexity and underlying
methodology. We are therefore working at pace to find the most
credible and consistent on-farm tools to assist farmers to
understand their baselines and thereby to prove additionality, so
that they can actively seek carbon credits and biodiversity
credits, which will help them to hit net zero and their income
accounts.
of Hardington Mandeville
(LD)
My Lords, everyone, including farmers, has to be committed and
involved in attempting to achieve net zero. This year the
Government turned away farmers from their higher-tier countryside
stewardship and landscape recovery schemes. Those farmers were
ambitious to cut greenhouse gas emissions and restore nature to
the land. In future, is Defra likely to encourage farmers, rather
than discouraging them from playing their part in cutting
GHG?
(Con)
I do not know where these stats come from. We have doubled the
number of farmers in countryside stewardship. When we increased
the rates two years ago, the number of farmers entering
countryside stewardship doubled. I do not know where the noble
Baroness is getting these figures.
(Con)
My Lords, farmers up and down the land, along with a lot of other
people, will be breathing a sigh of relief because, apparently,
later on today we are going to look again at the policies on net
zero and, hopefully, will remove all those nonsenses from it and
try to make some sense of it, which has not been done so far.
When the Minister talks to farmers, could he please ask them to
keep growing barley, not bulrushes, and remind them that, as well
as keeping up conservation, as they must, their first job is to
make sure that the nation is fed?
(Con)
I agree. There is no dichotomy here at all. As the food strategy
shows, on the poorest fifth of land we produce less than 1% of
the calories we need. So there is plenty of room out there to do
what is necessary to restore nature, which is depleted to
historically low levels, which we want to see reversed by 2030.
We want farmers to get to net zero, which is fundamentally
important. We should all be proud that this country is a leader
in promoting net zero by 2050 and passing a Climate Change Act.
There are plenty of possibilities for farmers to continue to
produce food off land that is productive, as well as to restore
nature and to get to net zero using the land that is less
productive.
