Payments should be used to encourage diversity

Professor urges emphasis on horticulture as part of post-brexit policy

Future farm payments should be used to encourage arable farmers to diversify into horticulture in a bid to reduce trade deficits and encourage healthier eating, according to an expert in rural policy.

Delivering the inaugural Nuffield Farming Lecture in London, Michael Winter, professor of land economy and society at the Exeter University, said the UK faced a diet-related health crisis unless more was done to encourage people to make better food choices.

But he said responding to the country’s nutritional needs could help improve the country’s health and offer farmers new business opportunities, provided they were given support to adapt their operations.

Professor Winter said previous farm policies had become too focused on encouraging farmers to produce commodities, and with the development of a new domestic agricultural policy, the UK had the chance to reconsider agriculture’s role in nutrition, which would help society and support farmers post-brexit.

“We need to deliver a strategy that’s about food and nutrition, as well as farming and environmental policy,” he told delegates.

“For farmers, this means more attention should be paid to the nutritional content of their products, on top of traditional concerns of safety, quality and provenance.”

To help farmers deliver on these nutritional goals, Prof Winter said it was vital they were properly supported through Brexit, and helped to respond to market opportunities. In particular, he suggested horticulture could be a particular area for growth, given the multi-billion-pound deficit the UK has in fruit and vegetable production and trade.

“Brexit is a crucial unknown, and farmers need to transition creatively so they can respond to the food and health agenda,” he said.

“Looking at the food gap, horticultural production has to be at least trebled, which means farmers can move with a degree of confidence into that area. However they will need help. I’m not suggesting we go back to subsiding production, but we could have a new conversion scheme for horticulture to help arable farmers buy the new infrastructure they would need.”

Prof Winter’s recommendations were part of a wider report supported by Nuffield which examined the UK’S food culture and the opportunities that changing it could offer to UK farmers.

As well as a focus on nutrition, the report recommends that more is done to encourage new entrants to farming, upskill existing farmers, and find more ways to drive farm resilience.

“The report also calls for stronger and shorter supply chains which focus on food’s nutritional qualities, as well as quality assurance schemes which place nutrition at their core.

Farming payments in Britain could do more to promote growing fruit such as these strawberries at Invergowrie.