Priorities for food production highlighted on NFU stand at Lincolnshire County Show

NFU President Tom Bradshaw spoke to farmers about food production working ‘hand-in-hand’ with environmental delivery and said clear priorities were needed from the next Government and measures in place to help safeguard family businesses.

The need for profitability to enable re-investment in farm businesses and to deliver food security for the future was also a key topic.

The discussion was held in the NFU and NFU Mutual marquee on the first day of the two-day farming showcase yesterday (19 June) and those attending heard Lincolnshire was an important farming county delivering safe, traceable, affordable food to very high standards.

Lincolnshire farmer Andrew Ward, NFU Council delegate, and Kelly Hewson-Fisher, Savills director and head of rural research were also on the panel, which was chaired by Dr Louise Manning, University of Lincoln professor of sustainable agri-food systems.

Mr Bradshaw said: “Farmers are very well placed to deliver for food, for energy, for fibre, for the environment but what are the political priorities?

“We can live in a green oasis with a clean conscience having exported our environmental impacts to other parts of the world, but that is not something I think is acceptable for any modern Government to be a part of.

“We can’t offshore our carbon usage for sustainable food production.

“Delivering food and farming hand-in-hand with the environment is absolutely essential, it’s not either or.

“Other countries will always feed themselves first and when you look at the huge political tensions around the world and the impacts of climate change, we can’t continue to rely on others to produce more and more of our food as we look to feed 70 million people here.”

The meeting heard that 12% of the food produced in the country came from Lincolnshire including 27% of the vegetables eaten in the UK.

The panel also discussed the winter and spring flooding and incessant rainfall that has hit farmer confidence and farm finances so hard.

The meeting heard the amount of water ‘pumped out to sea over the last 13 months on the East Coast alone was the equivalent of four times the amount of water in Lake Windemere’.

The panel agreed productive farmland needed protecting and Kelly Hewson-Fisher said ways were also needed to capture that water and to store it for times of drought.

Andrew Ward, who farms combinable crops at Leadenham, said: “Lincolnshire is massively important for food production but we have suffered severely from flooding this year.

“A third of Lincolnshire sits below sea level and you can’t just say let the flood plain flood.

“People forget how much food comes from those areas and that it is massively important, productive fertile land which needs protecting.

“I think it’s important we keep those areas dry when we can and maintained and of course there is a balance in terms of environmental protection, land use and food production.

“We need Government to say what they want from the industry and how they plan to help us deliver that.

“The whole of the county’s farming infrastructure needs to be valued and the food we produce on our land valued.

“We need help from the next Government over water and climate change challenges, given what we have seen this spring.”

The meeting heard farmers remained on the frontline of climate change, were driven by innovation, science and technology to feed a growing population and that should make agriculture and horticulture an exciting business to be in now and into the future.

Standards, fair trade and a host of other issues were discussed including the need for Lincolnshire farmers and those across the country to have ‘the same level of access to the technologies’ as other parts of the world.

This the panel said would create a level playing field and it was also important to recognise that many food imports were produced to standards currently illegal in the UK.

The NFU’s General Election manifesto outlines key asks of politicians to ensure farmers and growers can continue to deliver for the environment, economy and local communities while producing more great British food.