What might a new Westminster government bring for food and farming?
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Big changes in political direction don’t happen often. With caution and hope, we set out how a new Labour government can support our work towards sustainable farming and healthier diets.
We’ve sent welcome letters to new ministers in Defra and the Department of Health and Social Care. We thank those, now departed from front line politics, many who we have worked with over the years including former farm ministers (notably George Eustice and Mark Spencer), environment minister Rebecca Pow who helped to champion soil health, a whole slew of former Defra Secretaries of State (including the reformist Michael Gove, and also Therese Coffey and Liz Truss). We will miss Caroline Lucas who championed so many of the issues we care about.
The Soil Association set out its priorities for the election in this manifesto, with the top 5 priorities being:
- Grow green jobs – support sustainable British farming and horticulture.
- Protect the NHS – feed our futures with healthy and sustainable food.
- Restore nature – transform farmland to save wildlife.
- Soil not oil – end reliance on expensive, fossil-fuel based and river-polluting nitrogen fertilisers.
- Fair food prices – for shoppers and farmers.
It’s fair to say that the environment, farming and food didn’t feature large in the election campaign. But sometimes consensus between the parties can be helpful such as we saw on the urgent challenge of climate change; and it is clear that the filthy state of the rivers cut through as an issue - our Stop Killing our Rivers campaign earlier this year proved timely.
We are encouraged that the new Ministerial team at Defra brings forward shadow ministers who are familiar with the brief and with whom we have built good relations, including the new Secretary of State, Steve Reed. Daniel Zeichner as shadow farm minister spoke at our Organic Trade Conference in the autumn and has expressed support for a transition to more agroecological approaches to farming. We hope Defra will want to recognise the benefits of organic for the environment, healthy diets and the economy with an action plan for the sector. And Wes Streeting, the new Health Secretary, has indicated that helping people eat and live healthily is an important pillar of a strong NHS.
Labour has indicated an intention to move forward with establishing a land use framework, which we have previously advised would be a helpful way of working with farmers to optimise how land is used, creating the conditions for agroecology to expand. We’re a small country and as Mark Twain said of land “they’re not making it any more”. Whilst we accept the need for more housing, we also need land for nature and food production, and a rush to build on the Green Belt before we have an effective framework for land use could cause irreparable harm. At the same time, too much of our land is currently used to produce crops for industrial animal farming, a leading cause of river pollution. Equally, there is an urgent need to boost homegrown fruit and vegetable production. Much of this might be in peri-urban areas (as we are demonstrating at our own Woodoaks Farm) – but this all needs to be done deliberatively and not as a free for all.
The new government could do worse than dust down a copy of Henry Dimbeby’s National Food Strategy which was consigned to the top shelf by the previous government – it has many useful pointers to aid rapid progress to more sustainable and healthy diets. We’re hoping the silly phrase “nanny state” can be consigned to history so the government can take the necessary action to address the over-consumption of ultra-processed foods. This may mean taking a more robust stance in the face of food industry lobbying. We are also hoping they will work alongside initiatives such as Food For Life to offer people the healthy options they want to see in schools and hospitals.
We hope Labour will stick to its intention to create a level playing field for farming in trade deals. It’s vital that on issues such as antibiotic use in farmed animals, imported foods produced in ways that wouldn’t be allowed here are not allowed. Recent trade deals with Australia and New Zealand have set a bad precedent and we want the UK to bring its standards up to the best, not trade down. Matching EU antibiotics standards would be a good first step.
Money – or the lack of it – will be a defining feature of this new government. Securing the funds to support nature-friendly farming systems such as organic will be challenging. We’ll need to build wide partnerships between farming and environmental groups, as we did around the Consensus on Food, Farming and Nature. We’ll also be looking for a robust and fair approach to legislation to help drive up standards, especially around pesticide use and the implementation of legislation on gene-editing.
The months ahead will bring fresh opportunities, and risk, for the journey to better food and farming. We’ll work closely with the government to help bring this about, but we’ll also not shy away from casting a spotlight when we think things aren’t going right. We are looking forward to a busy few months ahead.
