A brighter future for farming

Secretary of State Michael Gove set out the direction of travel for our farming industry this week at the NFU Farming Conference on 20 February 2018.

Here is an excerpt from it, with a link to the full speech.

“I believe that we should invest in research and development to improve productivity and to bring further environmental benefits.

Some of the developments which improve both profitability and the quality of produce spring from farmers themselves who are developing new and more sophisticated approaches towards natural food production. Changing cultivation methods, for example moving towards min and low till agriculture, require fewer expensive inputs and yield healthier food, they deserve to be championed and shared. Across the world farmers are learning from their experience with natural systems and are making changes to everything from animal husbandry techniques to cropping patterns with transformational results.

And we also need to invest in the potential of new technology. I know the NFU has campaigned hard for a multi-species Livestock Information Programme. I hope to make a firm announcement shortly, as you made a compelling case for investment in that technology, and as Meurig pointed out, improving traceability, providing guarantees on the origin of quality food, is something that consumers want, and that farmers deserve. And that’s why I hope to say more, as I say, in a week or so.

Also when it comes to technology, whether its automation and machine learning, data science or gene-editing, improved tracking and traceability of livestock or new plant bio-security measures, there are a plethora of specific innovations which can increase productivity across farming, bring food costs down and also help us to improve animal and human health and ensure we better protect the environment. These are public goods in which we should invest and they can only be fully realised if we invest in a way which individual farmers and land owners, at the moment, are simply not equipped to on their own. Without public investment to support scientific breakthroughs, and then to help disseminate them across agriculture, we won’t secure the improvements that we all want to see.

And making sure these breakthroughs bring the greatest benefits to the greatest number, depends I think on even greater collaboration and cooperation between farm businesses in the future. And I want to incentivise greater collaboration – not least to ensure we can guarantee environmental improvements at a landscape scale and also to help smaller mixed and livestock farmers cope with market volatility.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/a-brighter-future-for-farming