Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to prevent potential food shortages.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
As demonstrated throughout the Covid-19 response, the UK has a highly resilient food supply chain. Our high degree of food security is built on supply from diverse sources, strong domestic production, as well as imports through stable trade routes.
The Government will shortly be publishing a food strategy. This will address food security, and the importance of international resilience and open markets, but also the importance of domestic production and how that contributes to our resilience. It will also address the role of the food industry in our levelling up agenda.
In England, our new farming schemes are supporting farmers to improve profitability and productivity.
We have increased the Farming Investment Fund for small technology grants from £17 million to more than £48 million, supporting thousands of farmers with their investment plans this year.
Food production and environmental protection must go hand in hand. For the first time we will be safeguarding the assets that support domestic food production, by taking the health of our soils as seriously as the size of our yields.
Food security rests not just on maximising domestic production (which is market driven), but on making best use of land types and good farming practices. Our schemes will ensure our long-term food security by investing in the foundations of food production: healthy soil, water, and biodiverse ecosystems.
Finally, the Government has also set out a legal obligation to produce an assessment of our food security at least once every three years. The first UK Food Security Report was published in December 2021. It recognised the contribution made by British farmers to our resilience, and the importance of strong domestic production to our food security. This report serves as an evidence base for policy work, safeguarding food security in the UK for years to come.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Adaptation Committee’s recommendations on page 28 of the Climate Change Committee's report of June 2021 entitled, Progress in adapting to climate change: 2021 Report to Parliament, what plans his Department has to take steps to mitigate the effects on agriculture of a two degrees Celsius warming scenario.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Mitigating and adapting to climate change is essential to support the productivity of farming businesses and support global food security. The UK Climate Change Act 2008 requires the Government to prepare, on a five-yearly cycle, a UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), followed by a National Adaptation Programme (NAP), setting out actions to address the risks identified in the CCRA. The Climate Change Committee's Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk offers a detailed and up to date insight into the growing risks and opportunities the UK and its natural environment faces from climate change, including in relation to agriculture.
This evidence has informed our third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3), which we laid in Parliament on 17 January 2022. The evidence will inform greater ambition and action on enhancing resilience to the impacts of climate change through the third NAP (NAP3) and highlight gaps where the Government needs to go further. NAP3 will address the risks and opportunities for a 2ºC warming scenario, to build a more resilient country, with a focus on enhanced ambition, implementation, and evaluation.
Our policy development and delivery for agriculture's contribution to net zero can provide a multitude of adaptive benefits. For example, Defra intends to offer greater support for agroforestry through the 2020s, which will help to: sequester carbon; reduce soil erosion and flood risk; improve tolerance to drought; and reduce heat stress and wind exposure in livestock through the provision of shelter and shade. We will continue to consider the importance of climate adaptation as we develop our environmental land management schemes to support a resilient agricultural sector.
Defra continues to support research to promote agricultural resilience. For example, the Genetic Improvement Networks research projects aim to enhance the productivity, sustainability and resilience of the main UK crops. Defra has also recently introduced new regulations that will make field trials and research easier for plants produced through precision breeding technologies, such as gene editing, which has the potential to develop crops that are more beneficial to the environment, more resilient to climate change and more productive.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Adaptation Committee’s recommendations on page 28 of the Climate Change Committee's report of June 2021 entitled, Progress in adapting to climate change: 2021 Report to Parliament, what plans his Department has to take steps to mitigate the implications on water management of a two degrees Celsius warming scenario.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Adapting to climate change is essential if we are to meet the 25 Year Environment Plan goal of achieving clean and plentiful water.
The Climate Change Committee’s Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk offers a detailed insight into the growing risks and opportunities the UK and its natural environment faces from climate change. This evidence has informed our third Climate Change Risk Assessment, which we laid in Parliament on 17 January 2022, and will inform the development of the third National Adaptation Programme, expected to run between 2023 to 2028. NAP3 will address the risks and opportunities for a 2ºC warming scenario, to continue to build a more resilient country, with a focus on enhanced ambition, implementation, and evaluation.
The Environment Agency is committed to designing an approach to working with regulated industries around impacts (including those related to water scarcity) associated with a 4°C rise in global mean temperature by 2100.
The Environment Agency’s National Framework sets out how we expect to see improved collaboration to aid the environment and the sustainable use of water resources. This approach will inform water companies’ statutory water resources management plans, which set out how they will secure water supplies in the long term. The statutory plans must take account of future pressures, including climate change and drought resilience improvements. To further improve water demand management, the Government is consulting on a water demand target under the Environment Act 2021.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Adaptation Committee’s recommendations on page 28 of the Climate Change Committee's report of June 2021 entitled, Progress in adapting to climate change: 2021 Report to Parliament, what plans his Department has to take steps to mitigate the effects on nature conservation of a two degrees Celsius warming scenario.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Mitigating and adapting to climate change is essential if we are to meet our historic target to halt the decline of nature by 2030. The UK Climate Change Act 2008 requires the Government to prepare, on a five-yearly cycle, a UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), followed by a National Adaptation Programme (NAP), setting out actions to address the risks identified in the CCRA.
The Climate Change Committee's Independent Assessment of UK Climate Risk offers a detailed and up to date insight into the growing risks and opportunities the UK and its natural environment faces from climate change, from terrestrial and freshwater habitats to soil health and natural carbon stores and to agriculture.
This evidence has informed our third UK Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3), which we laid in Parliament on 17 January 2022. The evidence will inform greater ambition and action on enhancing resilience to the impacts of climate change through the third NAP (NAP3) and highlight gaps where the government needs to go further. NAP3 will address the risks and opportunities for a 2ºC warming scenario, to build a more resilient country, with a focus on enhanced ambition, implementation and evaluation.
Restoring our natural habitats has a number of potential benefits for helping support the resilience of ecosystems to climate change. For example, improving the condition and diversity within, and connectivity between, our wildlife habitats will help species survive in their existing locations and allow them to move towards more suitable climates where necessary. This work is supported by policies such as the nature recovery network and Local Nature Recovery Strategies, as well as the policies set out in the England Peat and Trees Action Plans. We have also invested significant funding into nature, including over £750 million in the Nature for Climate Fund and £80 million through the Green Recovery Challenge Fund.
The environmental land management schemes will be key mechanisms for enhancing our natural landscape's resilience and its adaptive benefits to society, by rewarding farmers for their roles as environmental stewards and improving the resilience of their agri-businesses as well.
Asked by: Jessica Morden (Labour - Newport East)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether the Landscape Recovery scheme pilot will also include blocks of land that are hydrologically connected, rather than contiguous, to assess how to maximise the benefits of floodplain restoration, including sustainable regenerative farming.
Answered by Baroness Prentis of Banbury
This is a devolved matter and the information provided therefore relates to England only.
The first round of Landscape Recovery is open to bids from projects of 500 to 5,000 hectares of broadly contiguous land.
The application process for this round will be competitive and bids will be assessed against set criteria. The environmental outcomes that projects will deliver will be assessed as part of the environmental objectives criterion. As part of this criterion, we will assess a range of benefits which could be delivered by floodplain restoration, including for biodiversity, resilience to extreme weather events and improving water quality.
Contiguity is important for many of the environmental outcomes we are seeking. However, we recognise that habitats and land ownership in England are sometimes fragmented, so we will take a pragmatic approach to contiguity. Project areas can have some gaps, but applicants should demonstrate how any gaps will not compromise their project’s environmental outcomes. This will be assessed as part of the ‘project leadership and delivery’ criterion.
We are not ruling out projects which include elements of farming in the landscape. However, projects that are mainly focused on sustainable and regenerative farming or making space for nature in the farmed landscape are likely to be better suited to other schemes such as Countryside Stewardship, the Sustainable Farming Incentive and, in due course, Local Nature Recovery.