Farming reforms that benefit the sector and the environment

Farming, food, and agriculture

Leaving the EU puts farming and agricultural businesses in huge danger. It threatens cuts to the financial support, which underpins farmers’ livelihoods and their ability to manage the countryside, and tariffs on exports. For agricultural products, EU tariffs average 22.3% – putting Britain’s £18 billion of food exports in danger. Our system must support farmers, ensure food production, and protect the environment. 
 

That’s why we will:

• Continue our long campaign to reform agricultural subsidies – making sure British farming remains competitive.

• Ensure that smaller farms are protected and move support away from large landowners, whilst delivering a more localised agricultural policy.

• Focus support and subsidies towards effective land management including countryside protection, flood prevention, food production, and climate change mitigation. 

• Encourage new and younger entrants to farming by championing different forms of ownership including longer tenancies, share farming, and community ownership.

• Continue to improve standards of animal health and welfare in agriculture and promoting the responsible stewardship of antibiotic drugs.

• Bovine TB is a horrifying disease that causes suffering to wild and domestic animal populations. In the 12 months to October 2016, there were 9935 cattle culled due to TB. We wish to continue efforts to eradicate the disease in the British Isles.

The food chain

We will tackle issues in the whole food chain, so we will:

• Introduce a National Food Strategy to promote the production and consumption of healthy, sustainable and affordable food.

• Increase the powers of the Groceries Code Adjudicator and extend its remit to include businesses further up the supply chain, helping to ensure that farmers receive a fair price.

• Ensure that future trade deals require imported food to have as high safety, environmental and animal welfare standards as domestic products, including clear and unambiguous country of origin labelling for
meat and dairy products.