Politics

The Government’s new green watchdog should be given the power to determine whether future farming budgets are high enough to deliver desired environmental outcomes, a leading ecological body has said.

Former NFU president and AHDB chairman Sir Peter Kendall admitted he was ‘not confident’ that the Government would reject imported food produced to lower standards but fearful they may go instead for ‘bucketshop’ deals.

Farming remains hugely important to the French economy and its success is very much tied to the operation of the EU Single market.

The issue of food standards for imported food is not going away as Secretary of State for Scotland Douglas Ross MP discovered when he addressed the NFUS conference in Glasgow.

Almost four years on from the referendum, we still don’t know whether farmers will be able to sell into the EU market or if they’ll be undercut by substandard imports, says Deirdre Brock, SNP spokesperson for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

We in the EU are sad to see our friends in Britain leave, but we will always welcome you back if you change your mind, says Eamon Cassells, a young beef farmer from County Meath in Ireland.

Now we’ve left the EU, it can no longer be blamed for difficult or unpopular decisions, particularly on trade. In future, UK and devolved Ministers must take full responsibility for their actions, says John Davies, NFU Cymru president.

Planting trees is not, as many would argue, the easy answer to tackling climate change according to NFU Scotland president Andrew McCornick.

Natural Resources Wales (NRW) has warned the Welsh Government that its proposed new water rules may have the ‘perverse outcome’ of making water quality worse.

The Labour Party has voted to block the Agriculture Bill’s passage through Parliament because it does not include measures to protect farmers from being undercut by low-standard imports.