Food and Environmental Security moves one step nearer, says CLA

The creation of the new Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA) is a step towards realising the Country Land and Business Association’s (CLA) ambition to bring Food Security and Environmental Security together.

Defra is amalgamating the Central Science Laboratory, the Plant Health Division, Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate, Plant Variety Rights Office and Seeds Division to form FERA.

It fits in with Secretary of State Hilary Benn’s thinking, recently expressed at the Oxford Farming Conference, that "with growing public interest in the environment and in our food - where it comes from and how it is produced - these two challenges are now increasingly becoming one and the same".

CLA President Henry Aubrey-Fletcher said: "I am delighted the Secretary of State is acting as matchmaker in this desirable marriage.

"We need to produce more healthy, safe food in the years ahead to feed a growing global population but we have to do it in way that does not damage the natural resources that future production depends upon and in a competitive global market that may not take its environmental responsibilities as seriously as we do in the UK. This is the great 21st Century Land Use Challenge".

The CLA will continue to press the case both in the UK and through the European Landowners Organisation and believes failure to rise to this challenge is not an option.