Food: Production

(asked on 12th May 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether his Department has taken steps to (a) provide financial assistance to farmers to enable higher quantities of food to be produced in the UK and (b) support increased food production in the UK by other means.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 16th June 2022

Food is the primary purpose of farming, and always will be. Farming in England is now going through the biggest change in a generation. As Government, our approach to working with the farming sector is changing too. The Common Agricultural Policy paid farmers based on land ownership. Our schemes are incentivising farmers to take care of natural assets, like soil, which in turn is good for food production and the bottom line. They are about supporting the choices that individual farmers take for their farms, and we are ensuring that all farmers, including tenants, can access funding.

In England, we are providing farmers with two ways of receiving payments: one-off grants and ongoing schemes. Farmers can pick and choose from the offer to find a package that works for them. Everything we are offering contributes to our three goals: supporting viable businesses, maintaining food production at its current level, and achieving animal health, welfare and climate outcomes.

In terms of grants, we have made available and increased the budgets of our farming innovation and farming investment programmes. For ongoing payments, we have over 900 farmers in the pilot for our sustainable farming incentive and will shortly start the roll out of that scheme paying farmers to improve their soil health.

On 13 June, we published the Government Food Strategy, setting out that we will maintain domestic production and increase it in sectors where there is the most opportunity – including horticulture. The strategy sets out further details of how farmers will be able to use grant funding to boost profitability and maintain food production, and also sets out measures to boost local food consumption.

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