British farming is crucial to our food security
by Jim Paice MP, Wednesday October 14th 2009
As ever the farming and countryside organisations were strongly represented at the Conservative Party Conference and the various meetings and debates they held were inevitably both well attended and lively.
The only thing that flowed faster than the centenary beer at the NFU fringe meeting were the questions.
Having spent the vast majority of my life involved in agriculture, and with two sons in the industry, I understand the challenges farmers are facing.
The Conservatives recognise British farming’s crucial importance to our food security and to the vibrancy of our natural environment and rural communities. We want to help farmers raise production as we look to a future in which very rapidly there will be billions more mouths to feed. But as pressures on our natural resources grow we do not believe in production at any cost.
There can be no return to the days of the past, when Government encouraged intensive farming practices and the clearance of hedgerows and woodland. As I said in Manchester, the environment and food production is not an ‘either/or’. We need both. It is clean water, healthy soils and thriving biodiversity upon which our food security ultimately depends, and it is the job of Government to ensure that farmers are provided with the right kind of incentives to do what they do best: produce high quality food in harmony with the environment.