UK commercial farming can deliver sustainability
"Commercial Farming: Delivering the UK’s new Agriculture Policies" was released this month by the Commercial Farmers Group to coincide with the second reading of the Agriculture Bill in the House of Lords.
As well as laying out the areas farming can impact positively, it argues that UK farmers should be ready and willing to compete with food imports – provided there is clear labelling identifying differences in production standards.
Commercial farming is important as fewer than 10 per cent of farming businesses currently produce over half the UK’s agricultural output.
These businesses are also ideally-placed to stimulate local economies, support wider industries and address pressing problems such as use of finite resources, greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and biodiversity decline. However, they can only do this if allowed the chance.
Unfortunately, UK history is littered with the results of so many great aspirational concepts which have been poorly delivered – because policy makers have not fully engaged with the people most involved in the implementation. We must avoid food and farming becoming a casualty of this too.
Commercial farmers should be seen as the solution, not the enemy. They can quickly bring about change through capability, data, scale and technology, to meet changing market demands.
James Black is from the Commercial Farmers Group
