Environmental Audit Committee
Oral evidence: Environmental change and food security, HC 880
Wednesday 12 July 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 12 July 2023.
Members present: Philip Dunne (Chair); Ian Levy; Caroline Lucas; Cherilyn Mackrory; Cat Smith; Claudia Webbe.
Questions 259 - 316
Witnesses
I: Rt Hon Mark Spencer MP, Minister of State (Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries), Department for Environment and Rural Affairs; and Tessa Jones, Agri-Food Chain Director, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Written evidence from witnesses:
Witnesses: Rt Hon Mark Spencer MP and Tessa Jones.
Q259 Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to the Environmental Audit Committee where we have the final oral evidence hearing in our inquiry into environmental change and food security. We are very pleased to welcome the right honourable Mark Spencer, who is the Minister of State for Food, Farming and Fisheries at DEFRA. Mark, could you introduce Tessa Jones, your official?
Mark Spencer: Well, Tessa can do that herself. She is the big guru in the Department dealing with all things that are food.
Tessa Jones: Good morning. I am the Director for the Agri-Food Chain in DEFRA.
Q260 Chair: Thank you. I will start by declaring an interest. I am a farmer and a member of the NFU and the CLA, both of whom have given evidence to this inquiry. Would anybody else like to—
Mark Spencer: I should probably join you in that declaration, Mr Chairman. I am also a member of the NFU and the CLA and have interests in agriculture that are recorded in my register of interests.
Ian Levy: We have a family farm in Northumberland—450 acres of agricultural arable land.
Cherilyn Mackrory: We don’t have a farm, but we own a fishing boat, should we touch on fishing.
Q261 Chair: Thank you. Minister, you and I have both taken our coats off, reflecting the fact that the temperature is warm. It is the summer, it is not that surprising, but we have had a record-breaking heatwave. Well, not yet formally a heatwave but very high temperatures in other parts of the world this winter in February and March, which have led to food shortages on our shelves here in the UK. We have a record-breaking June in the UK and in many parts of the world and a record-breaking first few days in July. There is no doubt that this provides stress for the food supply chains around the world, as we have already witnessed. Can you kick us off by giving your impressions of what that means for food security and the extent to which you and the Department are worrying about this?
Mark Spencer: Ironically, it was cold temperatures in southern Spain and Morocco that caused the problem with salad stocks, but clearly that is driven by climate change. I think that globally we will see more and more extreme weather events, which will put pressure on global supply chains and, of course, that will have its effect on the UK. The good news is that we have very robust supply chains in place. We also have a robust domestic food supply chain, but I don’t shy away from the fact that climate change will clearly have its effect upon the UK’s food security prospects. We will have to think long and hard about how we mitigate the impact of that on our supply chains and our domestic production ability.
Q262 Chair: We have had evidence from a number of witnesses that the UK’s self-sufficiency has been reducing across many categories over recent years and that not enough attention is paid to food security by the Government. Therefore, we leave ourselves exposed when there are either climatic events or conflicts, and obviously the Ukrainian situation has also caused issues. Is this leading to any change in thinking within the Department in trying to make a more robust supply chain?
Mark Spencer: The statistics don’t necessarily support that assumption. We have remained fairly stable for over a decade in the amount of food we produce domestically and the amount that we import. That is not to appear complacent, because the Government clearly need to think long and hard about that. That is why we are trying to invest in UK agriculture, in making sure that UK farmers have access to the best technology, the latest innovations in science and machinery, so that we can continue to become more efficient. UK agriculture has got about 1% more efficient every year for some time, for more than two decades, which means if we carry on on that trajectory, in 10 years’ time we could be 10% more efficient than we are today. That means we can either use 10% of the land we were farming for other purposes or we can harvest more food.
As the Government, we are trying to steer the middle path between increasing the amount of food that we are producing but improving our environmental footprint and our biodiversity at the same time. I think that those two things go hand in hand and we can achieve both things at the same time.
Q263 Chair: You have nicely teed up a discussion about land use and I know that the Department is working hard on the land use strategy now. Can you give us any insights into when we can expect to see it—I think it is due to be published this year—and the debate that is going on within the Department about how to balance these conflicting challenges?
Mark Spencer: Of course we are still committed to trying to achieve the goal of looking at the land use review and making sure that we know what the land is being used for. That is the first stage. You need to know what you are measuring and what your baseline is, so working out what we are using land for today is the first step in that. We then need to look at the land types that are available to us and clearly we have an interest in making sure we protect peatlands, because they are a very important carbon sinkage. To damage those peatlands would contribute a huge amount to our emissions, which we are trying to lower.
First, we must set that baseline and understand what we are using land for today, but the freedom-loving economist in me does not want to be too prescriptive. I don’t think communism works here by dictating to landowners and land managers what they can and can’t do with their land, but we need to think about the levers that are available to us to influence that. We can do that either through carrots or sticks. I personally think that carrots work a lot better to motive people in one direction or another. There is a lot of debate about solar, for example: taking land out of food protection to use for large scale solar. You can use the subsidy systems to influence what land is taken out of food production and what land is left in food production.
Q264 Chair: We have looked at the solar issues, as you have mentioned it, and we had some clarification from the Secretary of State about the definitions of the best, most versatile land and whether or not solar should be allowed through the planning system on grade 3a land. Have you reached a settled view on that?
Mark Spencer: I am conscious that this is a DLUHC issue, so I hesitate to wade into an area where I have no ministerial responsibility. It is for DLUHC to set planning policy, but of course we have conversations with them about planning systems. My personal view is that I would like to see more solar on tops of sheds and warehouses, on grain stores and car parks. We need to think long and hard about taking land out of food production for the long term before we make that leap. At the moment, the figures are reasonably low. I think less than 1% of agricultural land is under solar panels in the UK, so it is not having a huge impact on food production yet, but it is something that we need to keep our eye on.
Q265 Chair: We had evidence from the author of the food strategy, Henry Dimbleby, who was somewhat critical of the Government’s response to the report. Is there anything that you can tell us that gives any reassurance that the food strategy will be implemented with an eye on improving food security as well as reaching the balance between the environmental impact of how we use the land?
Mark Spencer: I have a huge amount of respect for Henry and the amount of work that he put into that report. In my whole political and agricultural past, I don’t think that food security has ever been as high on the political agenda as it is now. To suggest that the Government are not thinking about this is completely wrong. We are thinking about it constantly. The fact that the Prime Minister held a farm-to-fork summit in No. 10 is an indication of how importantly No. 10 view food security and the food supply network. It occupies an awful lot of time within DEFRA—making sure that we are not creating perverse incentives and motivating people to move away from food production but also trying to do that in a way that works with nature, that benefits the environment. There are a number of ways in which we can work that are beneficial and less damaging to our environment and still produce the same amount of food, if not more.
Q266 Chair: You mentioned DLUHC, but looking at other Government Departments, the Government are rapidly seeking to accelerate the number of free trade deals being done with other countries. To what extent do you or your Department get involved in the agricultural aspects of those trade deals? Is food security on that agenda?
Mark Spencer: My own experience is of CPTPP; I was the Minister at the time that that was being negotiated. We had a very active role in setting the mandates for the Department for Business and Trade to do that negotiation. We have conversations with them and if they want to step outside that mandate, they need to come back to us to say, “We need to move this mandate”. I think that we work very well with DBT, and we were able to secure a deal with our friends in CPTPP that is beneficial to all parties. That includes UK produce going to other countries and produce from other countries coming to the UK. That is how free international trade should work.
I think that geographically this is a great place to try to influence the world and supply other countries with top quality food. If we can do that in a way that is seen to be beneficial to the environment, we can demonstrate some global leadership here and demonstrate to the rest of the world that there are alternative ways of producing food and protecting the planet at the same time.
Q267 Chair: Tessa, does looking at the food supply chains internationally fall within your remit at all? Do you get involved in working with the standards assessors in other countries to check that food imports are coming through that meet our standards?
Tessa Jones: That is a joint effort across different divisions in the Department but, yes, we are certainly joined up on overall import standards and assessments of global food security as well as UK food security. That is a cross-departmental piece.
Q268 Chair: Does that mean that we have officials visiting other countries and actively involved in inspections or working with local inspection bodies to establish that they are operating the same standards?
Tessa Jones: I would need to double check the exact mechanism we use to do that.
Mark Spencer: It is important to recognise that different places in the world use different management techniques. For example, pork production in the UK is predominantly outdoors for the production of weaners, small pigs. It would be impossible to do that in Canada, for example, because the climate is much colder and forcing female pigs outside to have piglets would lead to piglet mortality. It is quite important to get that balance right and recognise that different parts of the world will have to have different standards for the way in which they produce food. That does not mean to say that they are worse or better, but we recognise that they are different.
Q269 Cherilyn Mackrory: Minister, I want to try to draw out some answers around climate change, in particular the extreme weather that we have seen over the last couple of years and the effect that that is having on water security for farms and soil management. We had extreme temperatures last year and we have had four or five record-breaking days already this year. We are seeing extremes, certainly where I am, so we will have drought and then suddenly we will have flash floods. What is DEFRA doing to see agriculture and food producers through this change in our weather at the moment?
Mark Spencer: First, I think it is recognising the problem that you have identified. We wholly recognise that this is a challenge in managing water when there is too much and when there is not enough. Opportunities come out of both scenarios. There is an opportunity for landowners and land managers to help and assist with flash flooding and doing that in a way in which they manage their land parcels to keep water uphill so that in a flash flooding scenario you can hold water in an area where there is not domestic housing. If that means temporary flooding of farmland, there is a way of working with the landowners and farmers to mitigate the impact that the flash flooding has.
There is also clearly a huge challenge in water-stressed areas, particularly in the east of the country. That is why we are investing huge amounts of taxpayers’ money in helping farmers build in resilience; looking not only at over-winter storage, so that they can extract water out of our rivers when it is plentiful and store it until the summer, but at some of the techniques that they use to apply that water. For example, drip irrigation is much more efficient in its evaporation compared to traditional drums, which you will have seen in the fields, which are big pipes of water squirting across the crop. I think that there is lots we can do and lots we are doing.
Q270 Cherilyn Mackrory: Farm storage, which I think is a priority that Minette Batters has mentioned in the past to help farmers, needs to be a priority, but we are seeing increasing costs in how that happens. How is DEFRA looking at the changing business model? We are in an inflationary economy. How will we be able to help them do that? That seems to be the way that we can go, if we can store it.
Mark Spencer: With capital grants but also with co-operation. Not every farm needs to have its own reservoir. You can get together with three or four local farms and build one in the middle of your land block. We can look to encourage that sort of co-operation. I think that works.
Q271 Cherilyn Mackrory: Can I ask about planning barriers, particularly with Natural England? A lot of farms are in areas of outstanding natural beauty or SSSIs and there are some barriers.
Mark Spencer: We are having conversations with DLUHC about trying to unblock some of that. Of course, we need to make sure we get these things right and in the right place, so there needs to be scrutiny. I don’t think we could move to a model of permitted development rights for a reservoir of a substantial size, but it may well be that on a smaller scale project we could look at those sorts of options. We are having conversations with DLUHC as to how to move forward so that the planning system does not block it. We are talking to the Environment Agency and Natural England about how they can get involved. Building a reservoir of that nature not only gives you great water to water your crops but it also creates quite a nature reserve at the same time. That water resource becomes available to the wildlife and is quite an oasis that builds biodiversity.
Q272 Cherilyn Mackrory: I don’t want to make you commit to DLUHC policy, obviously, but have you looked at timescales of when we might start to get some resolution to that?
Mark Spencer: I can’t comment on DLUHC policy but I can tell you that we are having positive conversations with it and it understands the challenge that we are all facing and wants to be part of the solution.
Tessa Jones: If I might offer some additional detail on that capital funding, we have made available £20 million in grants under the farming investment fund, which is on-site storage and the best practice application equipment. As the Minister said, the Environment Agency’s abstraction plan is also bringing together the group of actors to look at the ways of water for crops and managing the environment.
Q273 Cherilyn Mackrory: Brilliant. The CLA, the Country Land and Business Association, has said that, “Water for food production should be considered in legislation as an essential use in drought situations”. Is DEFRA considering that as well?
Mark Spencer: It is quite a legal minefield, so I will just tiptoe around it, if you will forgive me. There are historic rights to abstraction. We find ourselves in a circumstance where there may be a potato crop that is dying of thirst, that cannot have access to its water because a golf course two miles down the road has an abstraction licence, which it had historically. Extracting ourselves out of some of those long-term legally binding agreements is proving a little bit tricky, so we are giving it a bit of thought—
Q274 Cherilyn Mackrory: Is that done local authority by local authority?
Mark Spencer: It has been on an historical basis. Some of these people were given abstraction licences before the EA was even thought of. The Department is giving a bit of thought to how we can resolve that. It might be something that the Committee will want to look at at some point in the future, but I think that we need to find a way to consider not only the environmental impact of any abstraction licence but also the economic decision to not abstract water and the food security implications of that. It clearly makes no sense to irrigate half a crop of potatoes to get it to a point where it is nearly fit for the food market and to then cut that licence and not water it to its full potential.
Q275 Cherilyn Mackrory: Percentage-wise, obviously this is a growing problem but what do the figures look like? How much more of a serious problem is it than it was, say, five years ago, do you think?
Mark Spencer: It is very difficult to measure because it is weather-dependent, but we know that the trend in general is in a negative direction. It is something that we need to address, but season by season you have different outcomes, and it depends on the crop as well because obviously different crops require different amounts of water at different times of the year.
Tessa Jones: It is our intention that by 2050 we will have increased the amount of water stored by the agricultural sector and horticultural sector by two-thirds.
Q276 Cherilyn Mackrory: Finally, on healthy soils for food security and resilience in the changing climate, the Government have promised to publish a soil health action plan. Apparently, this has been delayed. Can you tell me why?
Mark Spencer: We have done such a lot of work on soils and it is very important. That is why in the SFI, the sustainable farming incentive, soils are a big part of the plan to try to incentivise good practice among farmers to look after their soil, which is a resource that we cannot manage without. There are certain parts of the country, particularly on peat, where it is a diminishing resource. That is bad farming, but it is also bad for the environment, so we need to think about how we will motivate people and manage that. That is why we have introduced the payments under the sustainable farming incentive to get farmers doing the right thing, thinking about it, and planning how they can improve their soils going forward.
Q277 Cherilyn Mackrory: It is quite labour-intensive for them to do the testing, though, isn’t it? They have to go through field by field.
Mark Spencer: There are plenty of folk out there who will do it. You also get consultants, of course, who want to sell you either lime or fertilisers and they will do an analysis of the nutrients for free. I think that farmers quite enjoy the process of analysing what they have got on the farm and looking at soils. Once you get into it, you find that farmers become quite enthusiastic about taking a spade and looking not only at the type of soil and the organic matter that they are sequestering but the structure of that soil as well and the impact that is having on the plants that they are trying to grow.
Q278 Cherilyn Mackrory: There is lots that the farmers can do themselves. Is there anything more that the Department needs to be doing to improve soil quality?
Mark Spencer: I think that there is always more that we can do. The first step is getting those payments so that we encourage people to measure what they have now, because once you have measured it you can start to think about how you improve it, but then motivating people to improve it. There is an awful lot of funding going into the use of cover crops. It is all building organic matter into the soil, which is not only good for the next crop but is very good for biodiversity. If you build up the insect population within the soil, all of a sudden you are building up quite a pantry of food for the bird population that flies above it.
Q279 Cherilyn Mackrory: Target-wise, when are we expecting to see much better soil around the country?
Mark Spencer: I think that we are starting to see that already because more farmers are thinking about it. Once we get SFI rolled out this summer, more and more farmers will engage in that process and we will certainly see more data. I think once you have more data and people are aware of their point on the scale, it is human nature to try to improve your point on that scale, isn’t it?
Q280 Chair: Soil quality is one of the areas for targets to be set by DEFRA and you mentioned the importance of measurement, which the Committee is very interested in. Are you working on soil quality threshold and measurement metrics?
Mark Spencer: We are certainly looking quite closely at carbon sequestration and measuring the amount of carbon in soils. There is a lot of thought going into that carbon sequestration model and how we can measure it. It is quite important that we all have a uniform system of measurement, not only in England but across the UK and probably across the whole of Europe, that we can compare apples with apples. There is danger in mis-comparing to other countries. We need to make sure we get this right because we must not create perverse incentives so that you are rewarded more for putting carbon into the ground than those who have done it in the past. If we create a perverse incentive so that you are rewarded for damaging the environment, I think that would be a huge mistake; it is a beartrap that we have to avoid. We are giving a lot of thought as to how we can avoid that beartrap.
Chair: We are coming on to other questions on this, so I don’t mean to eat everybody else’s lunch.
Q281 Caroline Lucas: You will know, Minister, about the many competing demands on land at the moment—everything from nature recovery to carbon sequestration, the growing of energy crops, not to mention house building. Where do the Government think the extra land will come from?
Mark Spencer: As I identified, we are becoming more efficient in the way in which we produce food, so we can produce more from less land. We need to focus on our productivity and make sure that we are producing food in the most efficient way that we can, albeit doing that in a way that does not damage the environment. I genuinely think that those two things go hand in hand. As we have talked about earlier, improving your soil quality and making sure you are sequestering carbon into the soil is not only good for biodiversity, but it is also very good for food production and crop production. It is the right thing to do and working with nature rather than against it. We are talking about many of the farming practices that generations before will have adopted, the use of natural manures and rotation, to create a better format for producing food. I think that we can do both if we get it right.
Q282 Caroline Lucas: I have no doubt that efficiency has a role to play, but nothing that I have read suggests that we could do enough via that kind of measure alone to be able to free up the amount of land that we need. My question is whether or not you believe that livestock farming will need to be reduced to make space for nature recovery, for example, as some have suggested?
Mark Spencer: In a global context or a national context? I think in a national context we should be careful not to fall down that rabbit hole, because you don’t what to displace that meat production to other parts of the world where the environmental impact is greater. To pay a Herefordshire farmer to plant trees to then import beef from Brazil, which has been produced on reclaimed rainforest in big feed lots, would be environmental sabotage, wouldn’t it?
Q283 Caroline Lucas: We had evidence from Baroness Brown who, as you know, is the chair of the Climate Change Sub-Committee on Adaptation. She said very clearly that we need to be reducing the amount of agricultural land we are using for animals and for crops. Is she wrong?
Mark Spencer: I don’t buy that. I don’t want to dictate what people can and can’t eat. That needs to be their free choice, but I think we can improve the efficiency of that meat production, make sure that the cattle that we are breeding emit less methane, make sure that the systems by which we are feeding those animals emit less methane and their feed conversion rate is more efficient. We can do that via genetics, management techniques and with new products that are coming on the market. We are doing a lot looking at methane suppressant feed additives and there are a number of products that are quite close to the market that improve the efficiency with which cattle, ruminants, convert—
Q284 Caroline Lucas: If we are really going to be guided by efficiency, wouldn’t we be looking at the fact that 85% of farmland is used to feed livestock? That seems to be an extraordinary amount, which is why you have people from Henry Dimbleby through to Baroness Brown and many others who are simply saying that we need to have a shift towards more plant-based diets.
Mark Spencer: That is because there is a huge amount of that land block in the uplands that is very extensively farmed. We are not comparing apples with apples there. The extensive nature of that upland farming system means that an awful lot of that land has sheep or cattle roaming on it. Not only does that have a benefit to our food production system but it also has a huge benefit to our tourism economy, to our mental health. Getting people out of our cities and into open spaces, into the beautiful uplands of North Yorkshire or on to Exmoor or Dartmoor has a massive positive impact on their mental health. The countryside is not just there to produce food, although clearly that is one of its primary functions. It is also there as a source of fresh air and relaxation and regeneration to us as human beings.
Q285 Caroline Lucas: Undoubtedly so, but the Dimbleby review, which you will accept took evidence from an awful lot of experts and spent an awful lot of time looking at this issue, said with some clarity, “Our current appetite for meat is unsustainable; 85% of the farmland is used to feed livestock. We need some of that land back.” Notwithstanding what you are saying about the uplands where, frankly, you would not be able to use that land for very much else in any case, the Dimbleby review is concluding that in plenty of other places in the country we need some of that land back for all the other demands that are being made on it. Therefore, I am interested in why you will not even consider the idea of the Government taking some role in advocating, promoting and incentivising a shift to plant-based diets, which would also be good for people’s health. I can almost hear you say before you say that it is the nanny state and we are not going to tell people what to eat. You do not have to tell people what to eat but you could be giving guidance. You could be saying, for example, in procurement choices, that there should always be vegetarian options and so on, so that a plant-based diet becomes a more normal and easier thing to adopt.
Mark Spencer: I think the marketplace delivers that, doesn’t it?
Caroline Lucas: Not enough, obviously, otherwise Dimbleby would not be saying this, would he?
Mark Spencer: Or maybe people are making a different personal choice and they are choosing not to eat the vegetarian option on the menu, but it is always there if people what to do that and make that choice at that moment.
Q286 Caroline Lucas: I was at the restaurant here last night; very unusually I was in Portcullis House. There was only one vegetarian option other than the pizza, out of about 20. We could be doing more; the Government could be doing more to make some statements about this, to put it on the agenda and make sure that it is being properly considered. It feels like your refusal to even move into this space, against the advice of practically all the experts, seems to be perverse.
Mark Spencer: To be fair, the DoH does quite a lot on promoting a mixed diet, on making sure that you think about the food that you consume. We, as UK agriculture, have a lot to benefit from consumers taking more interest in how and where their food is produced. It is oversimplifying things to say that moving in that direction necessarily improves the environment globally. We ship a lot of asparagus from Peru and a lot of avocados from California. That cannot be good for the environment if there was an alternative plant here that we could consume. Local is always better than imported, in my opinion.
The message that I am trying to deliver to you is that we can achieve all these things that you want to achieve without going down that prescriptive route.
Q287 Caroline Lucas: Why are Henry Dimbleby and Baroness Brown wrong, given the amount of time that they spent looking at this?
Mark Spencer: I am not saying that they are entirely wrong. We took on board quite a lot of their report, but I am saying that I do not think that it is a black-and-white choice. I think that we can do both. We can continue to produce meat on the uplands, if you like, and do that in an extensive way that delivers those beautiful landscapes, which we all enjoy, and we can improve the efficiency of how we are producing that food so that environmental impact, both nationally and globally is shrunk.
Q288 Caroline Lucas: I am worried about time. Can I take you back briefly to the land-use framework? Obviously, the deliberations around that will be one of the places where some of these decisions will be taken. As far as I heard—forgive me if I am wrong—when the Chair put the question as to when would the land use framework be published, given that it was expected in the summer and clearly is not going to happen now, can you tell us anything about when we will expect that?
Mark Spencer: My expectation is this year. That is my understanding. It does not fall under my ministerial responsibilities but certainly I have had input into that process, so I know that it is ongoing and my expectation is this year.
Q289 Caroline Lucas: Is it your expectation as well that it will be used to require changes to the planning system?
Mark Spencer: Obviously planning is a matter for DLUHC, which I have no ministerial responsibility for, but it is something that we will be able to use as a tool to have those conversations with DLUHC in terms of how we plan and what we plan and the levers that are available to change how people use their land. Farmers and landowners and land managers are very much up for the carrots that we can offer them to incentivise a change of practice.
Q290 Chair: Following up on Caroline’s line of questioning, I note that we have as a Government introduced behavioural nudges on restaurant menus so that they now have to identify what calories there are. That was a requirement of health and part of the obesity strategy. Therefore, it is not inconceivable that we could not do a bit more to nudge more plant-based—I speak as a beef producer, so I am not decrying the beef sector, but if we wanted to introduce a nudge towards more plant-based eating, it would not be prescriptive to provide ways of offering more information about it.
Mark Spencer: I am very much up for educating and informing consumers. I think that that is the right way to change any behaviour if that is your motivation. However, I do not wholly accept the concept that meat is bad and plant is good.
Tessa Jones: If I may, this is perhaps not a nudge, but in terms of consumer choice one of the flagship actions we are taking as a result of the Government food strategy—the response to the Dimbleby review—is around the food data transparency partnership, an innovative partnership with industry to look at what information and reporting is available for people to make those choices on the environmental footprint of the food that they are buying and eating.
Q291 Ian Levy: I would like to touch on environmental land management schemes and what progress the Government have made on them so far.
Mark Spencer: Quite a lot, is the answer. First, we have come to the conclusion that reinventing the wheel is not the right thing to do. We have improved countryside stewardship, a very successful scheme that has run for a long time. We have improved some of the payment rates and that is seeing good returns with the numbers of farmers who are now engaging with that programme. We have seen the numbers nearly double in three years.
On SFI, which is the new flagship regime, we are about to launch this August. The website will go live, and farmers will be able to sign up to the new standards. There are six different areas that they can sign up to. There are 23 standards in total. That is on the back of some trials that we did, pilot schemes, last year under SFI 22 where we listened to farmers and land managers on what worked for them and what did not work for them. We have been able to tweak it to make sure that we get the carrots right and are motivating people to go in the right direction. Pitching that at the right level is the difficult bit because you want to encourage farmers to think about how they are farming and move in a slightly different direction, but I am conscious that it is taxpayers’ money that we are using.
Q292 Ian Levy: Is there enough support given by the Government, by DEFRA, to farmers to understand how to get into these schemes?
Mark Spencer: That is a good question. We have done a lot. We have been at nearly every major agricultural show this summer, with a team of people. We are engaging with the NFU, CLA and TFA, all those membership groups within the rural communities that engage with farmers to make sure that they are informed. Lots of those organisations have been running their own workshops to make sure that farmers have access to that information. We will continue to do more of that as we move into the summer and the autumn. It is about communication and making sure that farmers feel informed.
Anecdotally, the feedback we are getting at those shows is that now people are quite open to a conversation and to looking at the new schemes. They are willing to go on GOV.UK and look at the schemes that we are rolling that. That has been a change in enthusiasm since we have published more detail.
Q293 Ian Levy: There has been a lot of anxiety about it, hasn’t there?
Mark Spencer: Of course. Farmers do not like change. They have got used to a system that works for them and their farming operation. We as the Government have come along and said that we want to go in a slightly different direction here, “Work with us and let’s devise some new schemes that will help and encourage you to farm in a way that is sustainable for the future, to make sure that you still receive taxpayers’ money but that we still get public goods for public money.”
Q294 Ian Levy: Could I expand a little bit on that? Looking forward, what changes to farming practices do you expect to see as a result of the ELMS scheme?
Mark Spencer: A number of areas. The beauty of it is that it is very flexible depending on the type of farm that you operate and your own farming system. We have talked a lot about soils so I will not continue to go on about soils. For example, if you are a livestock farmer and you are producing grass, there is a payment available to put clover into that grass mix so that your animals are eating clover as well as grass. Clover can absorb nitrogen out of the atmosphere and sequester that into the ground into its root systems. Nitrogen is obviously a very important element in producing grass, so the clover itself is a fertiliser and instead of a fertiliser coming out of a bag, it comes out of the atmosphere. That is a positive step forward that will reduce the amount of ammonium nitrate that we are spreading, which is a huge carbon absorber, producing that fertiliser. That is just one example.
Hedgerow management is another important thing. Farmers have been trained for generations to cut their hedges in the summer to keep them neat and tidy. The biodiversity reward of leaving that hedge cutting until the winter to allow birds the opportunity to eat the berries from that hedgerow has a massive biodiversity impact. Giving farmers the opportunity to cut that hedge later in the year and to put next to that hedgerow a strip of wildflowers also increases the number of pollinators that you have for the crop, which is very important. Just as importantly, it increases the number of predators that will eat aphids, which are a pest to many of the crops that we are trying to grow. If you can produce your own ladybirds and lacewings that go and eat aphids, less insecticide needs to be sprayed on that crop.
Q295 Ian Levy: Should the Government designate food as one of the public goods to be achieved under ELMS?
Mark Spencer: We take that for granted, to be honest. Let me be categorical here—the purpose of UK agriculture is to produce food for the nation and for the world. That is its primary purpose and that is what it always will be. The message that we are trying to deliver is that we can do that in a way that has a lower environmental footprint and is positive for biodiversity.
Q296 Cat Smith: Minister, could you give us a progress update on the two pieces of work trialled in the food strategy, the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Boards, What Works Centre and the new Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture? Could you talk specifically about how much annual membership of the Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture is likely to cost farmers? I am particularly interested to ensure that it is affordable for smaller, independent farmers.
Mark Spencer: We do a lot of work working closely with AHDB. It is a very, very important resource. In some areas, it lost its way in the past. We saw a vote among potato producers who decided not to carry on with that levy system. However, there is a new dawn coming for AHDB where they are engaging with levy payers to invest in our technological ability and technical advancement.
Tessa Jones: It is an exciting new area. It was the theme of one of the roundtables at the Farm to Fork summit led by one of the young farmers. It is a big focus for us in looking at supporting those skills and expertise and bringing on all the things that we have been talking about in terms of innovative practices in farming.
Mark Spencer: Under Nick Saphir, who is leading AHDB, we have seen a new vision and grip. He is certainly moving it in the right direction. Farmers now appreciate the work it is doing to bring best practice to food production systems.
Q297 Cat Smith: Is it likely to be priced at a point that will be manageable or affordable for the smaller, independent farmer who is more likely to benefit from some of the knowledge?
Mark Spencer: It has to be, doesn’t it, to make that work? I am very conscious that everything we do in supporting small family farms is fundamental to us maintaining the beautiful landscape that we see. It is possible to be critical of past regimes under the EU where we saw huge amounts of taxpayers’ cash going to huge landowners. We want to try to equalise that equation.
Q298 Cat Smith: Just to clarify—I am not trying to catch you out, Minister—is it that the membership price has not been agreed yet?
Mark Spencer: We are going through that negotiation now; it is ongoing. I welcome that debate, if I am honest. It is important that those levies are set at a level that is comfortable for producers and that they can see that they get a fair return on that investment. It is an investment in their own future. Let me check the detail and I can write to you on where exactly we are at in the process. However, the message that I want to leave you with is that it is a very positive thing; it is embraced by those food producers and they do see the benefit in that levy.
Q299 Cat Smith: With a changing climate and different parts of the country having very different weather patterns, will farmers be able to get advice tailored to their area through either the What Works Centre or the Institute for Agriculture and Horticulture?
Mark Spencer: I sincerely hope so. That is what we are aiming to deliver, however, not only through them. There are other groups as well, whether they are wildlife advisory groups, the RSPB, or the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group. There are lots of different organisations that can give farmers help and support. Not least of all, Natural England can help and advise farmers on making the most of some of the opportunities that are coming their way.
Q300 Cat Smith: My final question is about the adoption of new technologies. The food strategy outlines high-level ways in which the Government aim to, “Drive greater confidence, uptake and investment in new technologies”. Could you describe how you see that working and what that might look like as a programme of work?
Mark Spencer: It is genuinely exciting on a number of fronts: machinery, for example, and robotics. Only this year I have seen machines that are capable of harvesting strawberries and asparagus automatically—robotic machines that literally go and do the job that a human being would do. They are in development. In the reduction of pesticides, it is possible now to identify the difference between a weed and the crop you are growing in real time and then zap that weed either with a very microscopic amount of pesticide or with an electric shock. That is quite exciting.
On the gene-editing front, we can look at new plant varieties that mean that they can sequester their own nitrogen or nutrients from the atmosphere and have better root systems, which is better for carbon sequestration and for production. It is the same for animal production as well, in disease prevention and efficiency, harvesting the best of genetics from around the world and making sure that we have the best plants and animals and that we are producing in a way that is as efficient as possible.
Tessa Jones: One of the recent thematic challenges on the farming innovation programme was around climate-smart farming and sustainable on-farm protein production. This is genuinely at the cutting edge of opportunities for research and development as well as other areas under the farming investment fund to fund equipment and a more transformative infrastructure to put that money into the farms that are leading the way on this. Other programmes support that by sharing knowledge and best practice.
Mark Spencer: There are other bits as well, which are equally interesting, but which I am less excited about. Insect protein is not something that we have talked about here in this session. I do not relish the thought of eating a cricket covered in chocolate.
Q301 Cat Smith: What about lab-grown meats?
Mark Spencer: It is an interesting concept. I am probably more likely to be drawn to the interesting debate about insect protein for poultry and pig production and whether that stacks up in terms of the environmental footprint—whether you are better using UK-produced insect protein to feed poultry than you are buying soya from South America. The concept is worthy of a lot more investigation. Lab-grown meat? The energy that is required to do that at the moment is huge. As a consumer, speaking as Mark the consumer, not Mark the Minister, I am not that enthused about a burger grown in a lab.
Q302 Claudia Webbe: I want to ask you some questions on the issue of metrics and data to understand the Government’s progress in their ongoing work on food sustainability and metrics in that regard, and what the intentions are for requiring businesses to report on their carbon and biodiversity footprint. I know you spoke a bit earlier about making sure that we are comparing apples with apples, but could you summarise the Government’s progress in their work on food sustainability, data and metrics and outline what further work there is to do?
Mark Spencer: There is a lot of research taking place, not necessarily by the Government but by some fantastic education institutes up and down the country, measuring methane outputs of ruminants, measuring carbon sequestration of different crops, measuring cover crops. If you are growing wheat but you do not want to plant it until the spring, so you are growing a spring wheat crop, it makes a lot of sense to put in a cover crop to overwinter so that it absorbs nutrients that are in the soil but keeps those nutrients available for the next crop that you are going to grow. A lot of research is taking place into the benefits of which cover crop works best, which sequesters the most carbon and, in livestock, measuring the best use of proteins and the best genetics. UK plc is genuinely at the global forefront of this, along with colleagues in Holland and the US. We do have some of the best institutes in the world.
Q303 Claudia Webbe: Are the Government doing anything specific on the establishment of those metrics?
Mark Spencer: Yes, establishing the baselines is the first thing that we need to do. There is a lot of thought in the Department going into establishing those.
Claudia Webbe: You have yet to do that?
Mark Spencer: We do not have a credible system, a single system, that can measure carbon sequestration within our soil. There are lots of systems out there that are available to people to do that process, but I think that we as a government do need to form a view as to which one is the correct one to use. That is the starting point for working out how much carbon you have and you put more carbon into that soil, for example. However, there are other areas where we are much further down the line, for example in measuring the methane output of ruminants and what products we can use to suppress that methane production.
Tessa Jones: One of the major new areas of interest and challenge is measuring scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions. That is what the Food Data Transparency Partnership is looking at. We are at that point in the process where lots of people are coming up with methodologies and practices to do that, and the Government’s role is to try and standardise and agree a single methodology for doing that that everyone can sign up to make easy and clear for everyone to understand.
Mark Spencer: Obviously lots of international companies are doing a lot of work on this as well, so it is about sharing best practice and data. We do that through the food and drink council as well. We pull all those major players together under DEFRA’s chairmanship to have those conversations about what work they are doing and how we can share that best practice.
Q304 Claudia Webbe: Does that mean that it is the Government’s intention to set a baseline so that there is consistency across the sector?
Mark Spencer: You cannot improve anything unless you can measure it and you cannot start a system unless you get a baseline to start from. Of course, we can improve things on that journey and that is what some of the SFI regimes aim to do. We can sequester carbon, but we cannot compare your farm with that farm or your practice with that practice at the moment. Being able to benchmark against your peers and say that your farm is performing better on environmental standards than that farm is a good way of motivating people to improve some of their practices.
Q305 Claudia Webbe: If I hear you right, that there is an intention to set a baseline, when do you think that that might emerge?
Mark Spencer: I cannot sit here and give you a date. There is a lot of research going into this, but that does not mean to say that we cannot start the journey. I do not want to give you a negative impression that we are not already on that journey, because we can sequester carbon and we can improve our environmental footprint quite dramatically. However, if we want to trade that carbon sequestration, we need a system that we can all sign up to and understand. Looking to the future, we will all want to be able to measure to say that this carrot that you are consuming, which you bought from a local supermarket, has a carbon footprint of plus or minus whatever. Clearly, as consumers, we all want to be in a place where we can consume food that has a positive carbon footprint—do I mean positive or negative? I mean better for the environment. I am confusing my positives and negatives.
Q306 Claudia Webbe: We may want to be in a place where we trust businesses and Government to produce that baseline understanding and then be able to measure businesses against it. Getting to that baseline understanding, producing what that might look like and what it will cover is what I am driving at here. Tessa, do you want to help on when we can get to that metric?
Tessa Jones: There is having a standardised methodology by which everyone agrees what we are measuring and how, versus a metric where you say the number X is the right number.
Claudia Webbe: Is the baseline.
Tessa Jones: We are working on it at the moment and there is also a difference between the soil quality areas and the overall greenhouse gas emissions so that the product on your plate has some sort of reputable number. The methodology around the end product is quite technical and wide-ranging. Work will take place over the next 12 months or so to start to look at what that methodology might look like. It is too early to say a date for that now.
Q307 Claudia Webbe: Are you saying that you cannot get to the baseline until you have understood or got that methodology in place, so we are looking at least 12 months off before we have even the baseline?
Mark Spencer: It needs to be delivered internationally as well, of course, because we need to be able to compare internationally. What we are saying is that of course there are ways of measuring what we are doing and the environmental impact of what your wheat crop does compared with your potato crop. Of course it is possible to compare that anecdotally, but if we want to try to trade that—if we want to try to work out whether buying a potato from Leicestershire is better for the environment than buying asparagus from Peru—we do need to be able to measure that and compare it internationally and take into account a whole gambit of measurements because we do not know what fertiliser has been applied to those crops, what pesticides have been applied, or the carbon footprint of those fertilisers. There are so many dynamic moving parts to that measurement equation that it is difficult at the moment to compare that credibly.
Q308 Claudia Webbe: The industry is keen to see a baseline for soil health and carbon sequestration, as you have indicated, so I do not think there is any pushback from the industry. It is waiting for Government to come forward with a definition of what that baseline might look like and what it might cover. I do not think that we are going to get a definitive response on that now, so maybe that is something, Chair, that the Minister, or DEFRA, could write to us about. We are keen to look at that as part of our inquiries if possible. I am hearing 12 months off at least but it would be good to get some kind of clear understanding.
Mark Spencer: The point that I am trying to make is that it is entirely possible to go to a field anywhere in England and measure the amount of carbon that is sequestered in that square metre of soil. However, how do you apply that to the whole country? How do individual farmers measure that and how do you improve that measurement and is that a credible measurement based on what another farmer is doing in another part of the country or the world? That is where we have to get to internationally, I think.
Q309 Claudia Webbe: Can I move us on? We have heard that food-labelling requirements can be a useful tool for focusing the minds in food production businesses and that the dairy industry is a long way off its self-appointed targets for calculating its carbon footprint. What do you think about that?
Mark Spencer: There is a lot of work going into dairy production and its carbon footprint. Arla is leading the way on this, looking at how its producers are producing milk and the impact of that, looking to try to mitigate that and lower it. A lot of scientific research is taking place into dairy production. There are some quick wins that we can get quite rapidly in terms of feed additives to suppress the amount of methane that is being produced by dairy cows, techniques of managing slurry and improvements in infrastructure. There are lots of ways in which we can quite rapidly lower the environmental footprint of dairy production. Dairy farmers who I talk to are very much up for that fight and engaged in that process.
Q310 Claudia Webbe: Would you consider setting a requirement for food producers to report on their carbon and biodiversity footprints?
Mark Spencer: Consumers are clearly interested in that.
Claudia Webbe: I am saying this more from the point of view of businesses making their contribution to tackling the climate agenda that we are faced with. That is going to be a driver for businesses to contribute to this agenda.
Mark Spencer: Yes, and the aim of the sustainable farming incentive is to lower the carbon footprint, to lower the environmental impact of those food production systems that we have in place and to work with nature rather than against it. That is why we are using taxpayers’ money to motivate and support farmers to go in that direction.
Q311 Claudia Webbe: Would you consider setting a requirement for food producers to make clear their carbon and biodiversity footprints?
Mark Spencer: We have to be careful that we do not over-label our foods. Some consumers are very interested in the carbon footprint of their foods, some are interested in the calorific value of it, some are interested in the welfare standards by which it is being produced, and some are interested in the farming system that is being used, but you cannot put all of that on a label, otherwise you would get a sheet of A4 paper with every food item that you buy. We have to make sure that that information is available if you want to look at it.
Our retailers are pretty good at supplying that information. Let’s take a random company like McDonald’s, for example. Its marketing is built upon how its food is procured and how it is produced. If you go to McDonald’s and consume an egg, you know that that egg is free-range because that is what McDonald's puts in its marketing. You know that the beef is procured from the UK or Ireland because that is the standard by which McDonald's operates. The processor/retailer has a responsibility to communicate some of that information to their consumers, and lots of them do make a benefit and business model that is based upon that procurement process.
Q312 Claudia Webbe: I would suggest to you that the driver for it is not coming from consumers but from businesses themselves. The ability to be able to contribute and for everybody to be in this together in terms of the food producers is the driver, but if one sector is delivering and others are not, to push that for everybody is about whether the Government will set a requirement for food producers more generally to highlight the carbon and biodiversity footprint.
Mark Spencer: We are certainly convening lots of roundtables and talking to industry. I put it to you that they are driving this agenda as rapidly as the Government are. Lots of those companies are interested in their own carbon footprint, in measuring it but also in making sure that they are not offshoring some of that carbon footprint, to make sure that they are doing it in a way that is sustainable from a global perspective, not just a UK perspective. There is a lot of positive work that is taking place, some convened by the Government, some convened by the private sector and some driven by the consumer.
Q313 Claudia Webbe: Why not set a requirement?
Mark Spencer: We have set a requirement, in effect, because we have committed to net zero. That is what we have committed to, so that is the end goal. We have set that requirement that as the UK, as a nation, we are going to get to net zero.
Q314 Claudia Webbe: What is your requirement for food producers?
Mark Spencer: Of course, food production has a huge part to play in us getting to net zero. That is what is motivating the change to SFI, the investment in the new tech, the help and support that we are giving to those food producers, but also the discussions with processors and retailers to make sure that they are doing their bit in driving the supply chain in the right direction as well. We demonstrate the leadership as a Government, but I do not want to give you the impression that we have to drive people that hard, because they are very much up for this fight as well. They are very committed as a sector to get the best out of our food production system and have as low an environmental footprint as they possibly can.
Tessa Jones: Measuring the scope 3 emissions under Courtauld is more complex than the previous phases. As the Minister says, there is appetite for the whole group of Government and industry to come together to convene and to support the sector through that. That is where both the partnership that I described and the food and drink sector are playing very active roles. Short of a target, the Government’s food strategy did commit to mandatory methodology, if you want to put food labelling on food to have a single methodology, because there is a risk in the other direction that claims are made that are overstatements and you get some degree of greenwashing. We are now at the stage of maturity in that information market where standardising a single version of the truth, if people wish to put that label on at this stage, is beneficial for consumers.
Q315 Claudia Webbe: You mentioned the Government’s food strategy, but when they launched the food data transparency partnership they said, “We will consult on implementing mandatory public reporting against a set of health metrics and explore a similar approach to sustainability and animal welfare. We will fully consult on any mandatory measures before they are introduced... We will provide consumers with the information they need to make more sustainable, ethical, and healthier food choices and incentivise industry to produce healthier and more ethical and sustainable food”. That does lend itself to the establishment of—
Mark Spencer: We are delivering on nearly all those things by allowing the marketplace to function in the way in which it does. A lot of research has gone into lowering salt and sugar content in foods. We have made massive strides over the last decade, thanks to some of the bright scientists who are working in the food sector, in lowering fat content in foods. The market is delivering in lots of ways. We need to facilitate and encourage that as a Government, and continue to work with them, but I pay tribute to the efforts that the private sector is delivering.
Q316 Chair: Thank you. I have one final question. You have touched on a number of other Government Departments in response to some of the questions. One of the features of this Committee is that we regularly find that we are trying to look at things that cut across departmental boundaries and a number of elements of your evidence do that. Is there an existing cross-government forum that you can point to where we can be directing some of our recommendations or should we be recommending that some such body is set up, whether it is a Cabinet Sub-Committee or a food security forum or some entity where everything can be brought together?
Mark Spencer: I do see DEFRA as being the lead Department in this fight and in this challenge. I would encourage you to aim your report at us and let us absorb it and challenge us with the responsibility to go and push those other Government Departments in the direction that you want to see us go in. It helps me as the Minister if you recommend that I say something to DLUHC. It certainly opens the door for me to say, “Can we come and have a chat because the Environmental Audit Committee has suggested that we have a conversation about this? Would you welcome that?” It makes it much more difficult for it to say no if you have put that recommendation in. We are the lead Department. Charge us with the responsibility. We are up for that fight and we are proud of our record so far.
Chair: That is very helpful. Thank you very much indeed, Minister Mark Spencer and Tessa Jones from the Department. That concludes our session in public today.