My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Dundee. I thank him for introducing my Amendment 16 so eloquently. He has done a brilliant job and it reduces much of what I have to say.
It is quite clear that when nature suffers, we all suffer. That is why I believe that nature-friendly farming should be front and centre of the Bill. When anybody coming into farming picks up such a Bill and reads it—as I did when I started way back in the late 1960s, when I read the 1947 Act—it should say that nature-friendly farming is the route forward. It is the only way that agriculture will survive in the long term.
I hope all your Lordships have read the recent Living Planet Report, which is pretty horrific reading. It says that the populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have declined by an alarming 68% since 1970. That is not all farming’s fault, but farming has been a contributor to that decline. For that reason I welcome subsections (a) to (j), but nature-friendly farming should also be in the Bill. I chose to insert it at this point because of its importance. In Committee it was an amendment after (j), but I thought it deserved a paragraph of its own.
I will correct one myth that seems to perpetuate in some quarters: that you cannot farm successfully and profitably if you also farm for nature. Many farmers have signed up to the Nature Friendly Farming Network, but I also draw the House’s attention to the amazing work of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Allerton Project, which I know my noble friend the Minister knows about. It has done years of research on this subject and proved time and again that farmers can improve yields, output and productivity at the same time as improving biodiversity and wildlife on farms.
I will take one example in conclusion: the grey partridge, which is mentioned in the Living Planet Report. There has been a huge decline in this country, of some 85%, in the grey partridge population since 1970. The work of the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust has proven that farmers can get the grey partridge back in large numbers, as well as being successful and profitable. I commend that template to all farmers and to the House. I hope that when my noble friend the Minister implements ELMS, he will bear that very much in mind.