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.

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.