Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 28
28
In addition to the six environmental goals set out in the 25-Year Environment Plan, the...
Conclusion
In addition to the six environmental goals set out in the 25-Year Environment Plan, the Department expects the Future Farming and Countryside Programme to help improve farm productivity. It explained that its work to improve productivity would focus on the resilience of the sector and enabling “the least productive farmers to prosper”.77 However the RSPB told us that the detail presented by the Department so far only related to SFI, which was only one of three components of the planned scheme, and that it lacked information on the rest of the scheme or the expected wider impact on farming in the UK. It explained that other factors were also fundamentally important to the viability of farming including market supply chains, equity, fairness, advice and trade agreements.78
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
3: PAC conclusion: We are not convinced that the Department sufficiently understands how its environmental and productivity ambitions will impact the food and farming sector over the next decade. 3: PAC recommendation: The Department should urgently explain to the Committee, showing its forecasts both for changes in land use and resulting changes in payments to farmers, how it expects its farming programmes to affect food production and farm productivity in England and report annually to Parliament on the level of food price inflation together with any changes to the proportion of the food we consume that is produced in the UK, which was 53% in 2018. 3.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: end of March 2022 3.2 The government agrees that it is important to understand the impacts of reforms on the food and farming sector and, with that in mind published a detailed analysis in 2018 and 2019 that set out the likely impacts of direct payment reductions on different types of farm business. 3.3 The 2019 Future Farming and Environment Evidence Compendium sets out a comprehensive analysis of the impact of removing direct payments alongside an analysis of routes to improve productivity and grow farm incomes. 3.4 The government is currently updating this analysis to reflect data on farm incomes immediately preceding the start of the agricultural transition and will publish an update by 31 March 2022. 3.5 The government agrees it is important to publish regular data on food price inflation and food self-sufficiency. Food price inflation and self-sufficiency is reported annually in the Food Statistics Pocketbook sections 6, 7 and 9 (a National Statistics publication, Food Statistics in your pocket: Summary.