George Eustice, Member of Parliament for Camborne, Redruth and Hayle, has today welcomed the new landmark Agriculture Bill receiving Royal Assent and becoming UK law.
The Government’s new Agriculture Bill will unleash the potential of agriculture and provide a boost to industry after years of inefficient and overly bureaucratic policy dictated to farmers by the EU.
The new Bill will empower our UK farmers and land managers, ensuring they we can reward them for the good work they do. This will allow them to stay competitive, help increase productivity, invest in new technology and seek a fairer return from the market place.
The Bill includes measures that will revolutionise the subsidy system by replacing the Basic Payment Scheme with the Environmental Land Management Scheme. This will reward farmers with public money in return for ‘public goods’ – including promoting better air and water quality, thriving wildlife, soil health or measures to reduce flooding and tackle the effects of climate change. The Bill is an important step for the Government in achieving its commitment to become net-zero by 2050.
The Bill also includes measures designed to support our farmers and land managers to boost their productivity, and ultimately maximise the potential of our land to produce high-quality food in a more sustainable way.
George commented “Our landmark Agriculture Act will transform the way we support farmers. The funds released as a result of the phasing out of the legacy Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) will be re-invested into a roll-out of our future farming policy, which will be centred around support aimed at incentivising sustainable farming practices, creating habitats for nature recovery and supporting the establishment of new woodland and other ecosystem services to help tackle challenges like climate change.”
“We will support farmers in reducing their costs and improving their profitability, to help those who want to retire or leave the industry to do so with dignity, and to create new opportunities and support for new entrants coming into the industry.”
George has written more about the governments new direction for agriculture policy on his weekly blog, read more here: https://georgeeustice.blogspot.com/2020/05/delivering-new-agriculture-p…;
