£3 million boost for farming and food competitiveness

Grants worth more than £3million have been awarded to help farmers boost their competitiveness, Farming and Food Minister Lord Whitty announced today.

The Agriculture Development Scheme (ADS) grants will help to deliver the government's Strategy for Sustainable Farming and Food, with some key organisations receiving money to take forward important elements of the strategy. The successful bids are:

- Assured Food Standards - The plans comprise: the creation of an independent, authoritative body for food assurance; reviewing assurance standards and their delivery, working towards consistency of standards and certification between sectors and extending assurance to new parts of the food chain; and developing a marketing and communications strategy.

- English Farming and Food Partnerships (EFFP) - The body set up to encourage greater collaboration and cooperation between farmers and within the food chain, EFFP will take forward work on regional collaboration, food chain collaboration, and education, training and skills.

- Food Chain Centre - Two projects are planned: one designed to develop a 'best practice hub' to identify and disseminate best practice to farmers and small businesses; the other to help dairy farmers get milk products to consumers more efficiently by identifying scope for improvements on-farm and within the supply chain.

- Meadow Quality Ltd - Meadow Quality will promote the use of performance-recorded rams to produce higher quality lambs and thus improve the percentage of lambs meeting buyers' specifications.

- Rural Energy Ltd - A farmer-led project in Leicestershire to create a market for short rotation coppice by supplying, installing and maintaining local heating systems. Groups of farmers will produce and transport wood fuel to the systems. This is the first ADS grant awarded for opening up new markets. If this local project is a success, the government hopes that it will prove a pilot that can be spread to other areas of the country.

Speaking today at the East of England Country Show, Lord Whitty said: "The successful projects cover all the priorities of the scheme: assurance standards, benchmarking and spread of best practice, collaboration at farm level and the opening up of new markets.

"The applicants, including those new industry led bodies, such as English Farming and Food Partnerships and the Food Chain Centre, will all be making an important contribution to the progress of the government's strategy to boost the fortunes and performance of our food and farming industries."

Since 2000 the government has awarded almost £12m in ADS grants.