Ian Liddell-Grainger It’s time to strike while the iron is hot
Recent events have demonstrated how urgent is the need to produce more of what we eat from within our own borders, Bridgwater and West Somerset Conservative MP Ian LiddellGrainger says in an open letter to Defra Secretary George Eustice, the MP for Cambor
DExtraordinary times we live in, but even the darkest of clouds can turn out to have the proverbial argent-tinted lining.
Such was my reaction this week when I read that during the pandemic, British consumers’ trust in the UK’s farming sector has enjoyed a somewhat meteoric rise and that some 40% of the population planned to shop locally for food this Christmas.
The thing is, George, that herein lies a message for the Government and if you can’t discern it, let me assist you. Never has there been such a rapid and measurably large increase in popular support for farming and now is the time for everyone to harness that sentiment and see to it that farmers get the backing they are going to need over the next three or four years while they adjust to life outside the EU. Now is not the time, I suggest George, to be tying them up so their only reward comes from non-productive environmental schemes. If the pandemic hasn’t proved it, or the events of earlier this week underlined it, then we need to be producing more of our own food. And let me just direct your attention to the dismal wheat harvest figures with the observation that given the upcoming meteorological challenges, now is hardly the time to be reducing the acreage down to cereals for one thing.
As you well know, George, the South West boasts the most dynamic and diverse food production economy of any comparable zone in Europe. We can point to a range of world-class products.
Yet they seem to be rather more highly valued by the rest of the world than by our own politicians. Cranking up the marketing machinery for regional foods has been an arduous and wearying process all the way through from the humble beginnings of the regional foods revival.
There has been far too little help for the specialist food and drink sector, and much of the assistance that has been received has come from the EU – a source from which of course we are now cut off.
Given the current worries about food security, given the chronic obvious need to cut our reliance on imports, and given the evident public appetite for more homegrown comestibles, there would hardly be a better time for us all to sit down and start planning how we can capitalise on the current mood for the benefit of a farming sector, where the hours are often punishingly long and the rewards insultingly small.
Strike, in other words George, while the iron is hot.