Futures Forum: Brexit: and the UK food system
Futures Forum: Brexit: and the small family farm
Futures Forum: Brexit: and migrant workers not wanting to work on West Country farms
The Chair of the Commons Health Committee
Futures Forum: The future of East Devon's hospitals >>> campaigning to keep - and expand funding
... is also concerned about local farming issues in her South Devon constituency:
SARAH WOLLASTON: What does Brexit mean for farming?
| Posted: November 02, 2016
LAST week I organised and chaired a panel event on the future of food and farming over the course of Brexit negotiations and beyond. We heard from the chairman of the environment, food and rural affairs committee, MP Neil Parish, a farmer by background but also a former MEP familiar with the complexity of negotiations with our European partners.
Also on the panel to represent environmental concerns and the organic sector, the founder of Riverford, Guy Watson and the National Farmers' Union Devon county advisor, Andrew Butler. Thank you to everyone who came along to make this such a broad ranging debate.
It was an opportunity for local farmers and farm workers, councillors, food producers and the public to set out the issues they would like the EFRA committee to consider in its forthcoming Brexit inquiry and to ask questions and debate some of the key issues.
Farming, fishing and food production are integral to our economy, landscape and the cultural heritage of South Devon and we need to start asking the right questions and raising the issues which matter now to make sure the industry has a strong voice and thrives post Brexit.
I am pleased the same levels of financial support for farmers has been guaranteed by the government until at least 2020, but we will then have the opportunity to make sure we design any systems which work best for the UK. I think we need to be positive about the opportunity we have been given to rework how subsidies or grants work in the farming sector.
The message I hear is people want to see farmers rewarded for stewardship of our landscapes and environment and a greater recognition of the challenges facing small and upland farmers. There is clearly concern about subsidies working more for the benefit of large supermarkets and land holding corporations than the farmers who put food on our plates. Getting the balance right in supporting food production alongside environmental protection and protecting consumers was a key theme of the evening.
We must make sure future trade deals do not force out of business those who operate to high animal welfare standards by flooding our supermarkets with meat from animals raised in terrible conditions or subject to hormone treatment.
You can keep up with what I have been doing via my website at www.drsarah.org.uk/
And on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drsarahwollaston
SARAH WOLLASTON: What does Brexit mean for farming? | Torquay Herald Express
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