EUC Report: Agriculture

Lord Curry of Kirkharle Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle]

My Lords, I am very pleased that this report is being debated today and grateful to the committee for its publication. It is not only timely but on an extremely important subject, as we have heard, and is worthy of debate. May I say what a great honour it is to be a Member of this House and to find myself in the company of so many eminent and highly respected noble Lords? May I also add how grateful I am to the many friends I have on all sides of the House for the very warm welcome I have received? I am particularly grateful to my friends, the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, and the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, my supporting Peers, for their wise counsel and enthusiastic support. The noble Baroness is, I am thankful to say, still rescuing me when I get lost or step out of line.

I should like, with noble Lords’ permission, to say a little about myself. I gather that it is not uncommon to do so on the occasion of a maiden speech. I come from a farming family background in Northumberland. In 1971 my wife and I secured the tenancy of a farm situated in mid-Northumberland in the hamlet of Kirkharle, hence my title. I assume that many noble Lords will know that Kirkharle is the birthplace of Lancelot Brown, who became known as Capability Brown, the great landscape architect—a notable heritage indeed. However, what may not be as well known is that I am not the first Baron of Kirkharle. A family named Loraine owned the lands of Kirkharle for centuries and was granted the barony. William Loraine gave Capability Brown his first job in 1728, clearly recognising his emerging talent. There is a stone in the middle of a field to mark the death of one of his predecessors, a Robert Loraine, who was,

“barbarously murdered … by the Scots in 1483 … returning home from the church where he had been at his … devotions”.

Family records state that he was chopped into pieces, put in his saddle bags and the horse sent home.

Kirkharle was, and still is, in border country. I remind those who, as a contribution to the current debate on Scottish independence, suggest rebuilding Hadrian’s Wall, that most of Northumberland, including Kirkharle, lies north of Hadrian’s Wall and we wish to remain part of the United Kingdom. Sheep stealing was the cross-border currency then, and my early business experience at Kirkharle was in farming sheep and beef cattle—not stealing them, I hasten to add. My wife ran a very successful farmhouse bed and breakfast business during that time. We were there for 12 very formative and enjoyable years, and it was then that my interest in agricultural, food and rural policy was determined—which brings me to the debate before us today.

I compliment the sub-committee for this valuable report and the recommendations contained in it. This topic is of critical importance and needs to be taken very seriously indeed by the House. As has been mentioned, it follows a number of recent reports: the follow-on from the foresight study led by Professor Sir John Beddington, the EU Commission’s Horizon 2020 document, the Royal Society report, and others, including one for which I was responsible 10 years ago, which drew our attention to the huge global pressures we face and the need to find sustainable solutions.

Innovation is certainly going to be required and the recommendations in the report are important. The well documented rise in the global population has been referred to already; it is now 7 billion and is forecast to rise to 9 billion by 2050. In addition, there is the impact of climate change, leading to increased desertification and weather volatility. There is a direct link between global weather patterns and commodity price volatility. Even here in Britain with our temperate climate, the Environment Agency is deeply concerned about water table levels in the south and east of England in the depth of winter. River flows are exceptionally low and rainfall has been between 30 per cent and 40 per cent lower than normal, which has led to restrictions on extraction that will have serious consequences for this year’s growing season, unless the position changes.

These issues have rightly heightened our concerns about food security. As Professor Bob Watson reminded us, the challenge is not one of feeding the world today. There is enough food, although the margin between supply and demand is finely balanced. Sadly, there are still more than 1 billion undernourished people in the world and about 1 billion who are obese. We waste more than 30 per cent of our food here in Britain, and I suspect that the figures are similar throughout the western world. The challenge today is one of governance, logistics and distribution, and of finding ways of providing today’s technology to sub-Saharan Africa.

We have been incredibly successful in our ability to increase food production in parallel with the increase in the global population, and I am fairly confident that we will continue to do so, provided that we increase our investment in science and technology, as suggested in the report. The subject of research—how we determine our priorities, and how we mend the pipeline to ensure that scientific knowledge is translated into practical solutions—is of course a high priority in the report, and rightly so. I know that it is a high priority for the Minister, who conducted his own study. For that, we should be very grateful. As he knows, I am keenly interested in this subject and will be doing what I can to further the cause. The impact of these global challenges and the role of science will need to be front of mind as the imminent CAP reform negotiations begin in earnest. The eventual outcome will be critical in shaping how we respond to these issues. As the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and other noble Lords know, I chair the Better Regulation Executive, and one of my deep concerns is that out of the CAP reform process we may find ourselves lumbered with significant additional bureaucracy. That, under the current proposals, is a serious risk that will itself stifle innovation—the very subject that we are trying to encourage.

No, in my view the challenge is not just whether we can grow enough to feed the world but whether we can reduce our environmental impact at the same time. Our ecosystems are fragile; our greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon emissions, are too high; and we are too reliant on expensive inputs to support current production levels. We need to find new tools and innovative solutions to help us produce more from less. To address this challenge, we need to continue to invest not only in science but in people. Investing in one and not the other will not achieve the outcomes that we are looking for. We need to invest in schoolchildren so that they have an understanding of these issues, and we need to invest in career development opportunities so that we attract young people who can help deliver the sustainable systems necessary—whether they be scientists, teachers or technicians who want to work in agriculture because it is such a fascinating challenge, and an exciting opportunity at such a pivotal point in history.