Food and environmental security at the heart of Shropshire talks

Food and environmental security were at the heart of talks held by the CLA at Harper Adams University College in Shropshire.

Speaking at the coveted Newport based agricultural academy, CLA President Henry Aubrey-Fletcher said: "It would not be dramatic to suggest that global food security will be one of the most important challenges that we face during the coming decades.

"We need to produce healthier, safer food in the years ahead to feed a growing global population. But we have to do it in a 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."

The CLA President added: "Public demands for higher standards of environmental stewardship show no signs of abating. The challenge we face - the great 21st Century land use challenge - is to improve the productivity of the land while, at the same time, maintaining first class standards of environmental stewardship."

The talks come in the wake of the creation of the new Food and Environment Research Agency (FERA). 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

CLA West Midlands director Caroline Bedell added: "This merger is a step towards realising the CLA’s ambition to bring food security and environmental security together.

"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."

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.