Food, Farming and the Environment

He did, and he was the only one who wrote to tell me so. Perhaps he has a better support system. This country is amazingly blessed in its agricultural land. Despite the depredations in the dairy industry and the varroa mite, this is literally a land of milk and honey. This country has huge potential for agricultural production, yet there has been a decline. It cannot be a sensible way of managing our affairs to encourage imports of agricultural produce and for there to be reductions in our industries. There is not only an economic but a moral imperative to reverse that trend, particularly given what we all know is coming—climate change and the need to feed an ever-increasing population across the world. We should be making best use of our natural advantages. The decline in what we consume of our produce is quite noticeable. During the lifetime of this Government alone, 10 per cent. less of the meat that is put on tables in British households comes from home-produced sources. That is a marked decline. Only 50 to 55 per cent. of the vegetables eaten in this country now come from British sources, with the rest being imported. That is partly due to purchasers—not just consumers at the point of sale, but the supermarkets and retailers—and partly because of deep-rooted ignorance among a large part of our population who find no connection between the produce that comes from rural parts of Britain and what they actually eat, and who see things as coming in packets, rather than from fields. A farmer in my constituency was taken aback when a teacher—not a schoolchild—asked him whether it was necessary to kill a cow to get its milk. Such ignorance and lack of connection between urban and rural Britain is astonishing. It is imperative that that approach is changed. The Secretary of State talked about employment. If nothing else, there is a need to recognise the number of people who are still employed in the sector. Even though fewer people are now directly employed on the land as primary producers, we should recognise that a large sector of our economic production and national employment is engaged in the whole business of food and produce. Let me deal with some of the problems. Dairying is the big issue for many of my constituents in my part of the world of Somerset. I still say—in the absence of any Cheshire Members in the Chamber I can do so without a great deal of argument—that Somerset has the finest dairy land in the country, as is recognised. However, let us consider what has happened to dairy farming. There are now 13,600 dairy farmers in this country—the actual figure that I have is 13,601, but we are losing two dairy farmers a day and I do not know which day of the week that number was printed on. There were 14,296 in 2007 and 28,119 in 1997, so half the dairy farmers in this country have gone out of production in just 10 years, which is extremely worrying. It is not just the farmers who have disappeared, of course, but the beasts in the herds and flocks. There are now 300,000 fewer cattle, 200,000 fewer pigs and 100,000 fewer sheep in the national herds and flocks than there were in 2006. Our capacity to produce food is shrinking, especially in the livestock sector. There are several reasons for that, and the one I always highlight is milk price. Until we have a sustainable price that allows our producers to get a return on their investment in milk, the dairy industry will continue to shrink. I return, as I have done many times in recent years, to the principle that we must do something about the horribly skewed chain in milk production between the primary producer and the supermarket. The huge economic strength of the oligopoly of retailers means that although we get a slight alleviation on milk price every now and again, the problem constantly returns when times become a little more difficult. That has an effect on not only dairy farmers, but processors, albeit to a lesser extent. Processors are often lumped in as part of the problem, but any who talks to cheese makers knows that the retailers squeeze them every bit as hard as the milk producers, which puts them at a disadvantage. We will not do that by relying on a market whose structure is fundamentally skewed; it is absolutely clear, as has been shown many times, that, to rectify the anomalies in the market, we need a statutory code of conduct that is enforceable and backed by an ombudsman. The sooner we get that in place, the better, and the sooner the dairy industry will experience more stability. Several Members have touched on the difficulties of Dairy Farmers of Britain, the co-operative that is now in receivership. The situation sends to dairy farmers throughout the country a terrible message—that, even when they think that they have a stable market for their milk and a co-operative arrangement that they hope is going to prosper, it can suddenly fall down. Although I hear what is said about the recovery arrangements that are being put in place, as far as I am aware, even those producers who have found new contracts have not received a milk cheque for May—effectively up until 3 June. For the average producer, that means £10,000 to £15,000 of lost income, and possibly more, as the hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs said. The average bank manager is not just going to ignore that, so we need to ensure that producers are able to see themselves through the next few difficult months until they have a stable income stream again—without some computer somewhere telling them that they can no longer cash their cheques because the bank says no.