The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. The payments coming to farmers have encouraged them to produce food—in many ways quite rightly—and helped to keep the price of food down for the consumer. It is only now, in recent times, with 7 billion people and rising in the world, that more food has been needed, and its price is going up.
In recent times, the prices of fertiliser, fuel and all those inputs that are needed to produce food have doubled. Therefore the key is to consider an agricultural policy that is not only green, but looks to ensure that food that can be produced sustainably is supported. This point has been made many times before, but if we look at our upland and hill farming, why are our hills so green and pleasant? Because they are farmed, and because there is stock on those hills. We need to consider that in respect of the CAP, because again—I am probably a little bit more controversial than some in this regard—it is no good just making a general payment across all farmers in future; we must look at the way that those payments are made.
Does the East Anglian farmer on the fens, who can produce 4 or 5 tonnes of wheat per hectare, necessarily need the same payment as the farmer struggling on the hills? Is it not time that we found a way for the farmer in East Anglia, who could carry on producing good wheat, to trade his environmental payments with somebody farming on the hills? In Britain there is not a shortage of land used for conservation and agri-environment schemes; nearly two thirds of the land is in one scheme or another.