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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] UK 'must enhance food production'
  • Date: Mon, 04 Feb 2008 13:59:52 -0700

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7169193.stm


UK 'must enhance food production'
The government must take action to help British farmers become as
productive as possible, the president of the National Farmers' Union (NFU)
has said.

Peter Kendall said practical steps were needed due to increasingly insecure
food supplies and volatile prices.

He said productivity and environmental protection needed coherent policy,
technology and investment.

Mr Kendall made the comments at the Oxford Farming Conference, one of the
biggest events of the farming year.

'Solutions not problems'

During his speech at the conference, which marked the NFU's centenary year,
Mr Kendall said: "Rising world demand, climate change and energy security
have combined to make agriculture a strategically important industry once
again.

"A sector that offers society solutions, not problems and to hear our
politicians acknowledge that would be a great start to our centenary year."

He added: "This is emphatically not a plea for government assistance or
subsidy; just a government statement that farming matters - to coin a
phrase - would be a good start."

Mr Kendall said that in order for the livestock industry to match the
economic improvement seen by the dairy farming industry, retailers and meat
processors should pay livestock farmers sustainable prices.

Disastrous year

He said he was struck by the difference in the approach to agriculture
between the UK and other European countries, pointing out that the nation's
self-sufficiency in indigenous goods has fallen by 15% in the last 10
years.

A Cabinet Office report looking at food policy is expected to say the
working practices that make food supply in Britain so effective can also
make it vulnerable to disruption.

Mr Kendall's comments come as farmers recover from one of the worst years
in recent memory.

During 2007, tens of millions of pounds were lost in the wake of a
succession of animal diseases.





  • [Livingontheland] UK 'must enhance food production', Tradingpost, 02/04/2008

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