We are urgently developing research requirements with other European laboratories to make sure we understand and the disease (Schmallenberg) better.NFU 2010: Kendall calls for 'smart spending'
FARMERS are capable of doubling their wheat and oilseed rape production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and benefitting biodiversity over the next few decades.
But this will only be possible with the assistance of ‘sensible financial incentives and smarter Government spending’, Peter Kendall will tell the NFU conference today (Tuesday, February 22).
Mr Kendall will kick start a two-day conference in Birmingham that will be dominated by the thought of forthcoming elections.
It will start this morning with speeches from Defra Secretary Hilary Benn and his Conservative and Liberal Democrats shadows, Nick Herbert and Tim Farron. They will lay out their thoughts and policies on farming ahead of the expected May General Election.
The conference will end on Wednesday evening with elections for the top three NFU officeholder positions.
Mr Kendall, who is facing a challenge from outspoken Somerset farmer Derek Mead, will claim in his opening speech that British farmers and growers have ‘won the debate that farming matters’. He will turn his attention to how, with the help of Government, ‘farming can deliver’.
Speaking ahead of the conference, Mr Kendall said: “We have politicians who will be making far reaching decisions about farming on the platform today and I want to take the opportunity to really drive home what farming can deliver for them and the people of this country in the future.
“It was Nobel Prize winner Norman Borlaug who said ‘in the next 50 years we are going to have to produce more food than we have in the last 10,000 years’.
“In response to this challenge, farmers could double their wheat and oilseed rape production while reducing greenhouse gas emissions and benefitting biodiversity.
“While producing more food we also have the capacity to generate power through hundreds of on farm anaerobic digestion plants using farm slurry and waste. These could also turn farm manures into fertiliser for re-use on soils and cut down on greenhouse gas emissions – everybody wins.
“But – and this is a big but – unless Government agrees to sensible financial incentives and smarter spending, the solutions on offer will be strangled at birth. It is not about spending more – it’s about spending wisely.”
He questioned how Single Payments in England cost, on average, £1,740 to process compared with £285 in Scotland and how the Australian cattle tracing system covering 28 million cattle costs £1.6m a year while the English system covering only 10m cattle costs far more.
“Savings in these areas could release money for essential research and development for food production. The £15m announced recently by the BBSRC to get research from the laboratory to the field is a great start but it is overshadowed when we consider the bankers’ bailout package of £37 billion. We are not asking Ministers to spend more money, just use what they do have wisely.”
