Politics

Shadow Farming Minister Daniel Zeichner has admitted the Labour Party will find it ‘tough’ to change farm and trade policy while the Conservatives have such a big majority.

Labour’s Shadow Defra Secretary Luke Pollard has said he believes farmers are set to be ‘screwed over’ by future trade deals, and there is nothing Parliament can do to prevent it from happening.

Once ELMs has run its course, the next scheme to be dreamed up by our acronym-loving leaders will be the Complete Rewilding of Agricultural Property Scheme, says Neil Farmer, an arable and sheep farmer from the Herefordshire-Worcestershire border.

The Government has left businesses in a state of Brexit uncertainty for too long, and it still remains unclear how we will trade with the EU in less than 100 days. That is astonishing, says Sue Pritchard, chief executive of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission.

During the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic in April, food kept flowing through the UK’s borders and into our supermarkets. But a second wave coupled with a no-deal Brexit has the potential to threaten our supply, says Efra select committee chair Neil Parish.

As a farmer’s son, and someone who married into a farming family, I understand the importance of a properly functioning internal UK market to the agriculture sector, says Paul Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives.

The National Trust has defended keeping its farm advisors on furlough at a pivotal time for the agriculture sector.

Defra’s new Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) will not help farmers prepare for the Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme, a coalition of green groups has warned.

The House of Lords has voted to ban low-standard food imports under any future trade deals with a majority of 95.

The NFU has set out proposals for how the new Environmental Land Management (ELM) scheme should work, after industry raised concerns about Defra’s ‘lacklustre’ plans.