My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I will talk about that precise issue.
I would like to have had the opportunity today to talk about innovations in farming. Precision satellite-assisted farming has become old news, with the internet of things and the incredible changes in technology bringing huge advances in agriculture. This is an opportunity for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to be at the heart of those changes and to support farming enterprise.
The impact of globalisation and the machinations of the CAP have caused the number of smaller farmers to plummet. This is bad news for the fabric of rural Britain, for rural communities and for the environment.
We now have a chance to avoid some of the failures that have afflicted rural policy making for decades, including grants to drain moorlands followed a decade or so later by grants to fill them in; grants to rip out hedges followed a decade or two later by grants to replant them; and incentives to plant thousands of acres of Sitka spruce and lodgepole pine in areas such as the flow country in northern Scotland. The list of lamentable policy making goes on, so please can we get it right, most importantly in the uplands?
We need to be very worried about what is happening in the Lake district. Hill farming created the wilderness and pasture that still defines the Lake district landscape. The hefted flocks and those who shepherd them are as much a part of that landscape as the woods and the open fell. That was what Wordsworth loved about the lakes. It was also what led Beatrix Potter, an expert Herdwick sheep farmer, to save 14 farms and to give them, their sheep and 4,000 acres of land to the National Trust. Her intention was for the National Trust, and us, to preserve this rural heritage for the nation. She expected us—as millions of people do today—to maintain those fragile social structures in rural areas and to preserve the skills we need to sustain some of our most treasured landscapes.
There is, however, a vision that treats sheep farmers as the enemy and aims to turn the fells into a Petri dish for nature free of human intervention. This sees the replacing of the unique blend of the wild and the pastured that has defined the Lake district for 2,000 years with something that is frankly shameful. Allowing Ministers to recognise that small farms, particularly those in our uplands, are the most economically fragile and arguably the most socially valuable should be key to any new post-Brexit model of rural support. Being mindful of what our countryside is, and seeking to protect and enhance the most stunning landscapes in the world while assisting the industry to innovate and be more efficient and market responsive has to be the goal. I urge Ministers to take this opportunity to be bold and to create something better than what we have had.
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