Food Security

In the few minutes left, I will try to add something new to this debate. I always think that food security needs to be considered in the context of the fragility of our food supply. That was brought home to us recently by the fuel strike, during which we saw photographs—they may have been in the Daily Mail, but they were there nevertheless—of empty shelves. If I want to scare myself as I cross the M25 coming into London, I think for a moment about how many eggs, pints of milk, loaves of bread, bags of peas or tonnes of fish have to cross that line just to feed this city on a daily basis. The way in which that is achieved daily is a triumph of market forces. I try to imagine how it would happen if it was controlled by a central agency—by DEFRA, perhaps. I suspect that there might be a few people fed in the suburbs, but food riots in Chelsea. We have to learn from the successes of the free market in order to make ourselves more self-sufficient. That is why I support the idea of places such as Thanet Earth. I have not been there, and there might be all sorts of problems locally that I have not heard about, but I have always believed that there was a market for proper, large-scale, home-grown food production near to centres of population. I have never subscribed to the belief that low wage costs elsewhere in the world would drive food production inexorably away from these shores. I have seen at first hand how food is produced highly efficiently in places such as Kenya. However, given the wage inflation in the developing world—it stood at 43 per cent. in parts of China last year—I believe that there is a huge market for places such as Thanet Earth. Furthermore, I never believed the GM theory that was propounded a few years ago—namely, that we could feed the world from a farm the size of Delaware. There is a great future for British agriculture. I am amazed that the Government's proposed amendment to our motion says that"““UK self sufficiency stands at 74 per cent. for food which can be grown in the UK, which is higher than in the early 1950s””." It is worth putting that statement into context. When Winston Churchill spoke at a National Farmers Union dinner in the 1950s, he said that"““30 million people, all living on an island where we produce enough food for say 15 million, is a spectacle of majesty and insecurity this country can ill afford””." I wonder what heights of hyperbole he might reach if he were able to consider the situation today, with double the population and the declining level of food self-sufficiency. Given the global changes in demand, our own consumer needs and the effects of the rise in the price of oil, we are faced with either a serious problem or a great opportunity. Huge challenges face our agricultural community, but there are also opportunities, and we need to embrace them. Unfortunately, at present, there appears to be a widespread lack of understanding of the fundamental importance of agriculture in this country. This sometimes leaves farmers with a sense that they are redundant, undervalued and misunderstood. I think that I am the only dairy farmer in the House—my hon. Friend the Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) will correct me if I am wrong—but I will not be one for much longer. I am selling my herd this autumn. Regulations relating to nitrate vulnerable zones and the cost of complying with an overburdening regulation scheme are driving me out of milk production. I should have reminded hon. Members to look at my declaration in the Register of Members' Interests. Farmers are the main users of land in Great Britain. Farming is a significant economic sector, but it is easy to forget the contribution that it makes to other income earners in this country, including tourism. The present Government have failed to give confidence to the agricultural community as a whole. We have seen their incompetence over the single farm payments and the needless red tape, gold-plating and bureaucracy that have been imposed on farmers and landowners. I remember my father talking about the agricultural community's fear of Labour party manifestos which talked, year after year, about the nationalisation of land. It is wonderful that that is no longer in Labour manifestos; it has not been in them for years. I submit, however, that there has been a nationalisation of the use of the land. What we can actually do on our farms is now so restricted, and the quangocracy now controls so tightly what farmers can do, that we no longer have the freedom that we had in the past. In conclusion, I want to make a plea, and I use these words with great caution. I believe that there needs to be a reassessment of the power of the environmental and conservation lobby. Actually, I call it the conservation industry. I am part of it; I have chaired a conservation organisation and I am a member of a variety of conservation bodies. I consider myself a conservationist. I have won conservation awards, for what that is worth. The problems of the 1970s, which included hedges being taken out to produce more food, represented appalling excesses. I can remember being encouraged to use appalling pesticides, such as Hostathion, which killed everything and had a wide impact on our environment. However, since the 1970s, the pendulum has swung much too far the other way. I heard recently about a prime management objective on an agreed management policy of a farm in Scotland, which was"““to create, maintain and encourage a high density of breeding raptors””." I have nothing against raptors; in fact, I am very fond of them and take great delight in the red kites on my farm. I would, however, question whether we have the balance right. In an era of food shortage, is it morally right to have such a—dare I say it—smug first-world attitude in saying that farms in this country should no longer have the prime objective of producing food? I submit that we can produce food and maintain the environment. The moral issues were clearly put by my hon. Friend the Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice): when we cannot grow something here, we have to buy it on the world market; and when we buy it on the world market, we are competing with poorer countries. That is something that we should ponder—whether we are getting the balance right. I wanted to say much more, but I also want to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), the eminent chairman of the all-party dairy farmers group.