I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Simon Jupp) on securing this debate. We cannot speak enough about the need to support our farmers, who produce the food we need in a way that is good for the country and our health. We talk regularly about the need to support our farmers and landowners in producing more food. We also talk a lot about the need to protect and enhance our natural environment and countryside, which many of us are privileged to live in or represent; there does not need to be conflict between the two. Food production and biodiversity can complement each other; our mistake has been to give farmers the impression that they bear responsibility for our countryside and natural environment declining, and their job to fix it. I disagree, but there is no denying that consumers, driven by supermarkets and Government policy on inflation, hunger for ever cheaper food; they often want to pay less than the cost of producing it—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax).
Farmers face unparalleled challenges and are fighting fires, barely surviving each challenge as it rolls over them. They have little time to think, plan and change the way they produce the food we need. As a result, small farmers in Cornwall are handing over their land to large contractors to farm. I see a significant number of farmers reducing the amount of food they plan to produce this year and next, and lots of farmers are leaving dairy altogether. The production of potatoes and dairy, which are essential to our daily diet, has reduced enormously in Cornwall.