Climate change could provide a boost for British food, the Environment Secretary has told farmers, as he sought to give reassurances over growing pressures on the industry.
“Climate change is going to mean that water scarcity becomes an issue in parts of the world. And parts of the world that have good and the most versatile agricultural land today may find it harder to produce crops in future,” George Eustice told the National Farmers’ Union conference on Tuesday. “And that means that the temperate regions of the world including here in the UK, will find that there is strong demand for the produce that they grow.”
The minister was challenged over the support given to the industry in the wake of Brexit and the Covid pandemic.
Minette Batters, the NFU president, said a crisis in the pig sector which has led to 40,000 healthy pigs being culled because of a lack of butchers, was “an utter disgrace” that was down to a “total lack of understanding of how food production works” within the Government.
A shortage of butchers, attributed to an exodus of workers from eastern Europe, has led to pig farmers being forced to cull their animals.
Government ‘too focused’ on rewilding
Ms Batters said that the Government was focused on reintroducing species and rewilding rather than food security at a time when the cost of living and Ukraine crises threaten supply.
“While there is a cost of living crisis looming and an increasingly unstable world…the UK Government’s energy and ambition for our countryside seems to be almost entirely focused on anything other than domestic food production,” she said.
Mr Eustice was also challenged on the outcome of trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, which the NFU has said risk imports of food produced to lower standards undercutting British producers.
Plans to pay farmers for vet visits
In response, he said that trade deals could be renegotiated after 10 years, and that the Government would be willing to do this “if it came to the position where your expectations of the trade deal were lower than you’d hoped.”
Mr Eustice also laid out plans to pay farmers for vet visits, as part of its ambition for healthier, higher welfare animals.
