Former environment secretary Steve Barclay says Labour’s promises cannot be trusted (Image: Getty)
Farmers will be forgiven for feeling they have no friends in Government at the moment. Labour has hit them with new taxes, increased costs, and a top-down diktat to simply do more with less.
And now Labour is doubling down on green plans that will take a significant amount of land out of food production.
This plan will mean at least the equivalent of 12,000 average UK farms forced out of business, as 9% of farmland is no longer used to grow food, and a further 5% mostly taken out of production.
And the true impact could be even more significant because there are other smaller changes that could impact agriculture.
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Livestock and dairy farmers are likely to be hardest hit and it was telling that, when questioned, Labour’s Environment Secretary suggested people could be encouraged to reduce their consumption of meat in order to hit Labour’s targets, rather than defend this vital part of our rural economy.
This is in stark contrast to the focus I had during my time in Defra, which sought to better support food production and align nature schemes to improvements that can benefit this, such as improved soil quality and abundant pollinators.
The Government hopes historical increases in agricultural productivity will be maintained, to help to offset the effect of reducing the amount of land farmed.
A real focus on productivity would be welcome, yet Labour’s policies seem designed to do the exact opposite.
In particular, the introduction of a damaging family farm tax will mean farmers are disincentivised from making productivity-boosting investments.
Labour also has little to say on longer-term game-changing technologies like automation and vertical growing.
They have still not brought forward the enabling legislation on gene editing, which would enable cutting-edge science on draught and disease-resistant crops. This would give our farmers a competitive edge, and it is a key benefit.
Rural areas are seeing a worrying trend with Labour. When I challenged my then-opposite number during the last election campaign on both plans to apply inheritance tax to farms and take significant amounts of land out of production, both were vigorously denied.
Yet both are being quickly implemented now Labour is in government – showing we simply can’t trust any promise it makes when it comes to backing farmers or protecting food security.
Steve Barclay is MP for North East Cambridgeshire and a former environment secretary