Agriculture: Flood Control

(asked on 8th December 2023) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if his Department will take steps to implement a comprehensive agricultural water management strategy.


Answered by
Robbie Moore Portrait
Robbie Moore
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 19th December 2023

Defra recently published its Plan for Water to deliver a safe, reliable, resilient supply of clean and plentiful water – for our homes, businesses, for leisure and for wildlife that rely on.

We are working with the sector to put in place funding to encourage the establishment of Water Abstractor Groups for agriculture. These groups will conduct supply-demand balance assessments for Agricultural Water Resource Management Planning and conduct Local Resource Options studies to identify potential local infrastructure projects, to improve agricultural water supply resilience.

The Government and the Environment Agency also support the agricultural sector through the Water Management Grant, under the Farming Transformation Fund, for the construction of new irrigation reservoirs and the adoption of best practice irrigation application equipment, helping to ensure farmers have access to water when they need it most. Over the coming months, Defra will consider the option of launching a third round of the grant in the future.

To drive progress to reduce water pollution from agriculture, we have set a new legally binding target under the Environment Act 2012 to reduce nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment by 40% by 2038. We have published our Plan for Water, which sets out our commitment to implementing a suite of actions to tackle agricultural pollution including increasing the Environment Agency’s farm inspection capacity, doubling the Catchment Sensitive Farming advice programme, investing in slurry management to help farmers improve practices and introducing Environmental Land Schemes to pay farmers for the delivery of environmental benefits.

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