Farmers must be allowed to produce food, says former MEP

Farmers must be allowed to maximise food production from their best soils, with agricultural policies targeting environmental schemes to more marginal land.

With demand for food likely to soar in the coming years, producers who want to farm for the market must be encouraged to do so, says Neil Parish, former chairman of the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee.

He was speaking to delegates on the Challenge of Rural Leadership course, run by the Rural Business School at Duchy College and the Worshipful Company of Farmers, last week. He said he was very concerned about the future direction of the Common Agricultural Policy. "There is a morality about looking after the countryside but there is also a morality about feeding people. People are starving in parts of the world, and the government must make sure we play our part in food production."

Mr Parish predicted that the CAP budget would drop by about 10% from 2013, with greater emphasis on environmental goods and renewable energy. "But we must make sure it doesn’t become too much of a social policy. A lot of countries are pushing for the amount of labour on farms to be linked to the Single Payment. But agriculture in this country has become lean and competitive, and I don’t think we should go back to putting people onto farms just for the sake of it."

Instead, policy makers should identify the best agricultural land and maximise production from it, while targeting environmental payments to more sensitive areas. "For so long we haven’t valued food production – it was always the environmental argument. But we can have both."

In addition, the EU had to allow individual countries to import and grow genetically modified feed, or face exporting their livestock industries, he said. "The irony is that the meat we import will be fed on exactly the same products we are refusing to let in. I’m convinced that the population wants good food and traceable food, but they don’t want to pay for it. It is the politicians’ job to drive this forward - we have to explain to people that biotechnology must be used to produce more food with less fertiliser and pesticides."

However, British farmers would continue to struggle until the Government addressed TB, said Mr Parish. "By slaughtering 50,000 dairy cows a year we are taking away the seed corn of the industry. It’s a nonsense to take out the cattle and not the wildlife – we need to have an effective cull of infected badgers now. It has got to be tackled head on."

The next Government would also have to set up a supermarket ombudsman to protect against underhand tactics, he added. "We break up banks when they have 34% of the trade, but there are no checks and balances for the retailers. We need to get the market right and must have real teeth when negotiating with the big buyers."