EUC Report: Agriculture

Earl of Caithness Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow our chairman. In doing so, I declare my interests as a member of the EU committee on agriculture that produced this report and as a trustee of a trust that owns agricultural land and receives payments from the EU in relation to its agricultural activities.

I also thank our chairman for the very comprehensive way in which he introduced this report. It is, as he said, a hugely complex subject, and I do not think that he could have produced such a good report without the help of our clerk and specialist adviser, whom I should like to thank, as well as those who gave us evidence. It was a fascinating subject on which to take part and a fascinating report to put together in a comprehensive framework.

I always think it is rather sad that Europe is increasingly becoming the granny of the world. We realise that as we get a little older we become a bit more granny-like and the rest of the world passes us by. The chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, explained exactly what was happening in other countries with the growth of agricultural production. I believe that what is happening in Europe is utterly unacceptable. If we do not have radical change, we will get left behind even more and that will lead to disastrous consequences.

Farming is increasingly in the spotlight, as your Lordships know. It is facing pressure from all sides and from many different interests. Besides the Foresight report, which concentrates not just on producing more food but on producing food sustainably, there are the other interests of biodiversity, habitats, energy and indeed water, which is the subject of our current report and is vital to all of us. Therefore, farmers are in the pressure pot yet again with the world looking on.

That highlights that any future help and support for the farming industry and in a wider sense must be much more co-ordinated than it has been to date. You cannot look at farming separately from the impact of forestry, biodiversity or habitat, because that solution has failed. There has to be a much more comprehensive approach to see the implications of carrying out reform in one sector and how that might affect our needs. The situation is therefore much more complicated, and the EU bureaucratic structure is ideally placed to stymie anything going down that line.

The EU has to change. The noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, was absolutely right to say that CAP reform was a fundamental factor in all this. All of us in the committee were disappointed at the lack of imagination in the CAP reform. It is all very well to perpetuate the current system—to an extent, it has worked tolerably well, given the position from which we started—but in moving from an era of surpluses to an era of scarcity one has to adapt and be much more bold in one’s thoughts, particularly if there are to be the added pressures of coping with water shortages and different temperatures.

Where does this leave the farmer? It leaves him with one key ingredient: he needs good scientific advice and he needs his hand to be held at the right time—not to restrict him but to help him to adapt and produce the food that we all need in a sustainable way, as well as keeping the environment healthy.

It was interesting to see how the research for this science varied within the UK. It was evident that, in Scotland, liaison with universities and with the Scottish Agricultural College is much better and takes place on a much higher place than is the case in England. However, we are hugely spoilt in the UK. If one looks at appendix 1 on page 88 of the report, one will read some devastating comments about work that has been carried out on the constraints on agricultural innovation cross Europe. I refer to the two extracts from a report by the European Standing Committee known as SCAR in 2008. Our report comments on this:

“The lack of co-ordination between national agricultural knowledge systems is a significant weakness for Europe and means that the potential of its investment in World class research is not being optimised”.

That is a condemnation of the current system but it is very hard for the Minister to reply positively to it because it is a charge against the EU. It is the Commission that must adapt.

Albeit that the research budget has been doubled, that is not enough. There is not enough within the CAP reforms to make certain that the right research is being linked and can be produced on the farm. There is not just one way. A huge amount of research is being undertaken on farms that needs to be transferred back to the universities to be enlarged and developed. It is very much a two-way process.

My noble friend the chairman—if I may call him my noble friend—mentioned the CAP reform and the emphasis that we would like to see on Pillar 2, with more greening of it and more environmental benefits coming that way. I totally support that but I have a worry at the moment. With much of Europe bankrupt, one must remember that ‘under Pillar 2’ 50 per cent of the cost must be paid by the member state. Although we are right in principle to say that there should be more in Pillar 2, I cannot quite see how Greece and other countries will be able to give it the right amount of attention. It is laudable in its aims but I fear that we will not get quite the advance that we wanted there.

I turn to something that the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, did not specifically mention in detail—GMOs. Immediately, memories come to one’s mind of headlines in some of our worst tabloids. That is one end of the spectrum. The other is that this could help us. I do not by any means say that GM is the complete answer but it is a possible way forward and would help us to some extent. It is very depressing that the EU has taken the line that it has so far. I was interested in the Government’s response to our recommendation on this—recommendation 33. I thoroughly support what the Minister said in his response, which was, “By allowing decisions”, to be made against producing GM crops “on non-safety grounds”, the EU,

“would undermine the current science and evidence-based assessment process”.

This takes me back to where I started. It is utterly key that we move forward in a scientifically proven and acceptable way. If the EU is going to put further spanners in the works, we will certainly not make any of the progress that we should. This is far too important a subject for us not to focus our minds. I hope that today’s debate will be read in Europe and that it will help the Minister in his negotiations there. It is in Europe, rather than in Westminster or Holyrood and the other devolved areas, that decisions have to be made.