Government food tsar urges Ministers to guarantee farm budget up until 2029

The UK Government's food tsar, Henry Dimbleby, has urged Ministers to guarantee the budget for farm payments until at least 2029 to ensure farmers are ‘properly recompensed' for moving towards more sustainable practices. The recommendation was made in the second part of the landmark National Food Strategy for England, which said farmers are facing a ‘financial cliff edge' in 2024, when the Government's current pledge to maintain the budget expires.Mr Dimbleby also called for a new rural land use framework to be created based on the ‘three compartment model', where some areas are used chiefly for food production, some for nature and carbon sequestration and others for low-intensity, nature-friendly farmland.Under this model, the strategy predicts 2-4 per cent of existing farmland might be given over to native woodland, which could contain large areas of species-rich grassland maintained by extensive grazing, while more than 53 per cent of England's total land area would be kept for farming beef, dairy and lamb.CLA president Mark Bridgeman said: "The strategy highlights the need to properly reward farmers for environmental improvements above and beyond what they already do. "Farmers often make very little profit from their efforts, and while so many of them are already undertaking a wide variety of environmental works, it is vital to recognise that any major change in land use proposed as part of Mr Dimbleby's vision should be driven by the market and positive incentives, rather than through compulsion."Mr Dimbleby also demanded farmers be ‘protected from unfair competition' by a joined-up trade policy.The report pointed to the example of Australian beef, on which tariffs are set to be eliminated after 10 years as part of a bilateral trade deal.Australian beef has a higher carbon footprint than the UK's, in part because forests are still being cleared there to create pasture."This is already negating our attempts at reforestation at home," the report said.Cost"Between 2010 and 2013, the UK consumed imported products which had been produced at a cost of 31,000 hectares a year of forest overseas, but we only managed to increase our own coverage by 17,000 hectares."Vicki Hird, head of sustainable farming at food coalition Sustain, welcomed the recommendation that the Government define minimum standards for food imports, and a mechanism for protecting those standards.She said: "Buying low standard, low animal welfare imports would encourage and reward harmful farming practices overseas and undermine new policies to support good farming practices at home."The Government needs to bring forward plans on this urgently before it signs a low standard deal with Australia, which would pave the way for more of the same with other nations."ReductionOn meat consumption, Mr Dimbleby followed the Government's Climate Change Committee in calling for a 30 per cent reduction in meat consumption over the next 10 years.But he was keen to rule out the possibility of a meat tax, as it had proved an unpopular idea with the citizens who discussed the idea in ‘deliberative dialogues' held to inform the strategy's recommendations.Instead, Mr Dimbleby has recommended the Government invest £50 million in building a commercial cluster for entrepreneurs and scientists working on alternative proteins, with a further £950m set aside for spending on methane-reducing additives for sheep and cattle, as well as new agro-ecological techniques.TFA chief executive George Dunn told Farmers Guardian he was disappointed that the report ‘unfairly vilified' meat production and consumption.Remarkable"It bears repeating that UK agriculture accounts for only 10 per cent of domestic carbon emissions, which is remarkable given that it is responsible for managing 70 per cent of the UK land area," he said."The other 30 per cent of land must therefore be producing the remaining 90 per cent of the carbon emissions. Agriculture must not be scapegoated as the source of the carbon problem."Switching consumption to sources of meat produced domestically must be the primary aim, as this locks in good carbon management and also the delivery of biodiversity, landscape and high animal welfare outcomes."The Government has promised to respond to the strategy with a White Paper in six months.