Government can not be trusted on food strategy – Herbert

The stratey was launched by Defra Secretary Hilary Benn at the Oxford Farming Conference today (Tuesday, January 5), but Mr Herbert said the Government’s lack of action to boost food production over the past decade showed ‘talk’ was not enough. 

In a statement this morning he said: “The Government’s belated recognition that food security matters will have little credibility after more than a decade in which they have devalued British agriculture and allowed domestic production to decline,” he said.  

“Ministers cannot will the end of higher food production without ensuring the means.

“It’s not enough to talk loosely about a fair market or the need for better labelling.  We need action, with a supermarket Ombudsman and legislation to enforce honest labelling if the retailers won’t act. 

“It’s meaningless to talk about a competitive agricultural industry while increasing the regulatory burden on farmers and failing to take the necessary action to deal with Bovine TB.”

He added that for too long, farming has been treated by Government ‘at best as though it doesn’t matter and at worst as an expensive problem’.

“The short-sighted response to the decades of food surplus was to believe that domestic production was no longer important,” Mr Herbert said.

“But today we face the extraordinary new challenge of feeding a rapidly rising global population against a background of profound environmental change, and now even those who have been careless about farming can see that food production matters again.”

He said last decade was characterised by the creation of a Government Department, Defra, ‘whose name didn’t even mention farming or agriculture’.

“Now we are entering a new age of agriculture, where farming matters once more.  “The goal must be to increase global production sustainably, feeding the world without depleting natural resources.”

With the imminent General Election clearly in mind, he added: “In this new age of agriculture, British farming has a bright future. But that requires a new start, where government understands that we cannot take farmers closer to the market while undermining their ability to compete. 

“If we want to ensure food security in 2030 and beyond, we need to begin by valuing the agricultural industry that will deliver it.”

Have your say

Please do not complete the following form field for security reasons.

Name

E-mail

Comment

Post as

Anonymously

Display name