Source · Select Committees · Environmental Audit Committee
Recommendation 12
12
Acknowledged
Clarify how environmental land schemes complement nature restoration and ensure food security
Recommendation
We welcome the consultation on a Land Use Framework and look forward to its publication. We recommend that in the Framework Ministers clarify how environmental land management schemes and other nature funding for farmers ought to complement wider nature restoration efforts and funding for nature restoration projects. We expect the Government to set out, by means of the Framework, how Ministers plan to ensure continued food security, given the projected reduction in the land area to be used for food production in England. (Recommendation, Paragraph 66)
Government Response Summary
The government states it will work with farmers to co-create a Farming Roadmap and develop a Land Use Framework, which will include approaches to incentivising nature recovery and safeguarding food production.
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
We want to work with the sector to develop a long-term sustainable plan for incentivising and funding for nature recovery. To achieve the right incentives and conditions, we will work in partnership with farmers to co-create our long-term Farming Roadmap. This will include our proposed approach to spatial prioritisation of outcomes and the spatial targeting of financial incentives for land use change, which will take responses to the Land Use Consultation into account. The Land Use Framework will provide a long-term view of land use change and will help to safeguard the best agricultural land for food production. The area of land used for agriculture is, however, just one of many factors that determine the scale and type of food produced in England. This is why the Framework will work as part of a wider reform of the whole food system, with a food strategy encompassing economic growth, food security, public health and the environment.