Batters Farming Review

In line with other countries, ONS should reassess value of GDP for UK agriculture and horticulture production by also measuring value of primary and secondary processing.

ONS should conduct an external/independent assessment of the full current and potential value of farming i.e. businesses that are directly related to farm businesses. Including allied industries, associated research stations, green energy, recreation and tourism.

Government to place more economic value on nature, which is currently not measured in GDP, by: i) ensuring ONS go further and faster in including the additional measures they are developing for international accounting (under the 'Beyond GDP') in the national accounting framework; and ii) OBR and HMT to consider natural capital stocks and flows in their assessment of the UK economy.

Defra to provide a scheme that is available for applications from farmers that were unable to access the previous SFI scheme. The scheme should include soil baselining, protein crops (peas and beans), pulses and oilseeds alongside existing SFI options that deliver greater resilience, including herbal leys and cover crops. Scheme must include options for Hill and Upland farmers and importantly, measure the importance of farmers and their families and those working on farms in these often-isolated areas.

Defra to assess the most cost-effective way to deliver the scheme.

Defra to apply the 'Active Farmer Principle' to schemes in the Farming Budget to ensure that funding is only going to farmers, rather than landowners or developers.

Defra Secretary of State should lead: "SOILSHOT + NATURE taskforce to explore development of a new funding stream to achieve payment rate in line with S&P comparison to median household earning. Taskforce should include the NFU, Country Land and Business Association (CLA), Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), Banks, Defra Green Finance Team and HMT where appropriate.

Defra/industry should work to develop a consistent set of standardised metrics for insetting markets to ensure their use in supply-chain agreements to address scope 3 is equitable and high integrity.

Defra/industry explore metrics aligned to agriculture for insetting and offsetting for nature outcomes: hedges, trees, green cover, nature benefiting herbal leys and cover crops.

Defra must mandate nature reporting for corporate businesses in the UK via TNFD.

Defra should work with industry to establish a Whole Farm Approach to building soil health, restore fertility, cut emissions, and increase resilience. This should include working with the Food Data Transparency Partnership, Farm Productivity Group, Sustainable Farm Networks, Linking Environment Food and Farming (LEAF) Demonstration Farms and others.

SOILSHOT+NATURE: to ensure a high integrity option in the Defra BSI standards.

Government and industry to establish the Great British FARM Advisory Board (GBFAB) to take a strategic approach to increasing market share of British raw ingredients in retail, out of home, exports and public procurement. The GBFAB should bring together technical expertise from government, farmers and the supply chain to agree sector missions within each market.

The GBFAB should track progress through a national balanced scorecard for each sector alongside tracking imports. The balanced scorecard should cover the British sourcing requirements from food retail and out of home to co-ordinate sector missions, as a means of managing supply and demand within the agriculture and horticulture sector as we import more food.

The GBFAB to develop a meaningful plan for growing our exports 30% by 2030, using the balance scorecard to balance exports with demand from the home market and building in the ambition in sector missions. Using this plan as a basis, the government to develop a coherent approach to trade negotiations and ensure continued support for our network of attaches to open global markets.

Defra should ensure the Circular Economy is considered at all levels of farming policy and decision making from exploring opportunities to reduce costs to creating new revenue streams through innovation and unblocking market failures.

Support the initial Trade and Agriculture Commission's recommendations 3, 4, 7, 8 and the call on the UK Government to promote, lead and develop global standards on environment, welfare and labour rights. Ensure farmer representatives are part of UK trade delegations (in line with US, Australia and NZ).

As set out in Government's Trade Strategy, Government must ensure we use the full range of powers to protect our most sensitive sectors, including ensuring tariff and safeguarding measures are included in all trade deals. Use the GBFAB balanced scorecard, including import data, to track volumes and through the market monitoring team, flag if safeguarding measures need to be applied.

Defra to support the continued role of the Trade and Agriculture Commission (TAC) in scrutinising trade deals and for the TAC to regularly engage with the Great British FARM Advisory Board to ensure implications of trade deals on increasing market share of British raw ingredients in retail, out of home, exports and public procurement are fully understood.

Review and update the retailer's voluntary principles on country-of-origin labelling and extend to out of home. In doing so introduce a requirement that use of British branding is underpinned by assurance schemes. Review its effectiveness in 2 years and if found to be ineffective introduce 1) statutory changes on the use of British branding or 2) labelling similar to the Australian made logo.

Government to ensure an effective and joined up approach to regulating unfair practices in the supply chain by: Extending the Groceries Supply Code of Practice (GSCOP), and therefore the remit of the Grocery Code Adjudicator (GCA), to out of home as the second largest market for British raw ingredients; Enshrine the GCA's Golden Rules in law; Extend the GSCOP to intermediaries and reduce threshold from £1 billion to all businesses purchasing over £500 million; Continue the Supply Chain Fairness reviews and extend fair dealing regulations to all sectors, including sugar; Bring the GSCOP and the GCA under the Defra umbrella to strengthen links to the Agricultural Supply Chain Adjudicator (ASCA).

Government should work with AHDB/NFU to establish an enhanced market monitoring function to bring together and collect industry and government data on prices across the supply chain. This should include data on farm gate, retail prices, prices through the supply chain, core input prices (including fertiliser) and HMRC data on trade flows, where necessary using powers set out in the Agriculture Act 2020.

Government should update the Buying Standards for Food and Catering Services to cover all sectors and to set consistent standards that prioritise British provenance, and embed dynamic procurement principles to make it easier and fairer for smaller, more local suppliers to access, and introduce mandatory data collection and reporting to ensure transparency and accountability.

Defra should establish Food and Drink England within the existing food strategy board to mirror the equivalent bodies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to establish closer relationships with farmers and local government linked to health, economic growth and food tourism. Food and Drink England should champion English food producers, develop our national food culture and unlock regulatory barriers.

Defra should work with AHDB, TIAH, UK Agri-Tech Centre and Defra Chief Scientific Advisor, plus sectoral expertise with a view to developing a more consolidated and simplified system that provides comparable or better benefit compared to the technical advice platform in Ireland. As a first step, Defra should establish a working group with industry tasked with consolidating the output and outreach from AHDB, TIAH and UK Agri-Tech Centre and sectoral expertise in Defra with a view to getting research prioritisation and translation, farm advice, skills into one place.

Defra Chief Scientific Advisor should work with BBSRC and Innovate UK on a co-ordinated approach for a goal-orientated scaled Commercial Research bids. A suggested priority for initial targeting is SOILSHOT — focusing on a suite of R&D around new green fertiliser products from phosphates, ammonia in poultry, livestock, and sewage sludge. These programmes should aim to achieve significant private sector funding and to keep both talent and new commercial opportunities in the UK.

Defra CSA and Industry should collaborate on developing a system for regularly discussing and agreeing priority areas for Commercial Research bids on a sector and sub-sector basis. These should ensure inclusion of underrepresented industries.

Government and Industry via the Food Strategy, should consider how the National Curriculum and Higher Education can be used to: Assess career, skills and learning gaps in Universities, Colleges and Land-based Colleges, and secondary education (A-level/B-Tech), to encourage careers in food and farming; Agriculture should be included as part of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) syllabuses; Transform healthy diet and nutrition education in our schools including healthy school meals and learning to cook from scratch.

Defra, AHDB and Industry to establish and facilitate regionally based Agri-Growth Hubs, as collaborative farmer networks in the regions or river basins. Defra should look to engage MHCLG, devolved and local authorities.

Defra to work with FED Groups and MHCLG to establish relationships with local authorities and farmers/growers to better inform local policy linked to economic growth and tourism.

Defra and the FED Groups to form a working group to establish further Farm Environmental Delivery Groups (FED Groups). These are farmer-led, voluntary groups working towards catchment scale i.e. 93 groups catchments in England. Defra should look to engage MHCLG, devolved and local authorities.

Defra must ensure that The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) is made mandatory to drive demand from the corporate and business sector to offset environmental impacts and dependencies.

Government must implement the recommendations from John Shropshire's independent review into labour shortages in the food supply chain. Which include the transformation and investment needed in automation and robotics to replace the dexterity and speed of the human hand.

Seasonal Worker Visa Scheme extended to nine months to cover the whole season.

Defra to support the tenant farming sector to give them the confidence to invest in and grow their businesses by: Encouraging longer term tenancies through a review of income tax relief for landlords and stamp duty land tax for tenants; Welcome the Law Commission's review of tenancy legislation and recommend that it should include updating end of tenancy valuations to include environmental value; Welcome the new Commissioner for the Tenant Farming Sector. The role should be reviewed in 2 years and consideration given to whether the post needs statutory powers.

HM Treasury to consider farm businesses operating as sole traders or partnerships should be eligible to claim full expensing and the 50% first-year allowance for qualifying plant and machinery.

HM Treasury and Defra should assess whether farm businesses are able to benefit as intended from available capital allowances, and that tax relief sufficiently meets the specific circumstances of farmers. To include consideration of: Annual Investment Allowance; Structures and Buildings Allowance.

Through the British Business Bank, the government should develop an offer of soft loans at 0% interest rate for new entrants, young farmers and business expansion investment. This could include public-private blended finance. The loans would unlock investment in the industry and would be open to a wider range of investment than that which supported the sector through traditional grant schemes.

Expand targeted FiPL funding to regional Agri-Growth hubs.

Review the current model of grant delivery to reduce the risk burden on farmers and streamline the approval process.

Future productivity funding should be open to more farmers and growers and make the level of funds available proportionate to the size of businesses applying. It should offer investment opportunities in productivity improvement across the entire sector, covering both individual businesses and Producer Organisations within sector missions.

Within 6 months, Defra must work with Industry to develop a National Planning for Food Infrastructure Blueprint to ensure that development and modernisation of food production is a priority in the planning system as a key part of our critical national infrastructure.

As a priority, muck/slurry spreading requirements for ammonia should be removed from the planning process where their implementation is duplicative to pre-existing permitting regulation.

Within the Blueprint, Defra must outline how it will ensure that reform of its regulatory bodies streamlines service for associated grants, permits and approvals from Defra/RPA/Natural England/Environment Agency/the Forestry Commission, and seeks to remove duplication of regulation wherever possible.

Defra must work with MHCLG as a matter of urgency to ensure that the blueprint is implemented through the national planning framework and ensures: that planning decisions critical to domestic food production be made by central government; that local authority decisions are aligned to a central strategy for building domestic food resilience; Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) exemption for agricultural development and protected cropping structures.

Defra should work with MHCLG to ensure that the Planning Inspectorate has the appropriate skills and resource to support the implementation of the blueprint.

As an immediate priority, Defra should work with MHCLG to ensure an extension in the PDR allowance beyond 1000m2 for livestock buildings is made available to achieve better animal welfare and environmental outcomes.

Defra must ensure that extended PDRs for on-farm wind turbines are made available to farming businesses.

Defra must co-ordinate with DESNZ, DSIT and Ofgem to ensure that District Network Operators are driving uptake of existing technologies in rural areas to improve internet access, mobile connectivity and grid capacity.

Defra's implementation of the regulator reform and regional planning recommendations of the Cunliffe review should be considerate of farming businesses by seeking to reduce regulatory fragmentation.

Defra should build on the recommendations laid out in Annex 7.6 to embed an evidence led, partnership approach with the farming industry in regions where water abstraction for food production is needed.

Defra should ensure that the establishment of Agri-Growth Hubs and Farm Environmental Delivery Groups proposed in this review are embedded in delivery of the Cunliffe recommendations with the aim of building relationships at a local and regional level.

As an immediate priority, Defra must work with MHCLG to ensure that extended PDRs for on farm reservoirs are made available.

Defra should undertake a systematic review of regulation, assessing the effectiveness and economic cost of legislation and regulation relating to agriculture.

In line with the Corry review, Defra should identify opportunities to reform regulation with the aim of: Evolving farming regulation to become outcomes focussed and move away from "calendar-based approaches", allowing farmers who are doing the right thing to easily demonstrate compliance; Ensuring wherever possible that regulation is risk based (rather than hazards based) and follows a science and evidence-based approach for plant protection products; Creating a fit-for-purpose approval pathway specifically for biological crop protection products.

In line with the Corry Review Defra should strengthen the regulator code to ensure regulators are fully considering the cost of compliance and proportionality of regulation on farm businesses. Regulators should have a responsibility to ensure that they don't undermine wider government objectives to support a transition to profitable and resilient domestic food production.

As an immediate priority, Defra should work with FSA to minimise the bureaucracy and resulting cost of FSA official controls for small abattoirs.