Questions have been raised over a new government offer to farmers to boost sustainable and environmentally-friendly agricultural practices in the UK.
Despite the offer of increased payments from environment secretary Steve Barclay, the National Farmers’ Union raised concern around British producers being undercut by those elsewhere where rules are less stringent.
“[An] urgent assessment is needed of the agricultural transition on food production and farm business viability,” union vice president David Exwood commented.
“It is imperative that [the] sustainable farming incentive has sustainable food production at its core, with enough options that sit around productive farming.”
Under post-Brexit proposals published on Thursday, the government offered simpler application processes and shorter agreements for farmers to take part in the scheme.
Increased payments for the likes of wildlife habitat creation would be made within the scheme, with more being offered for the development of lowland peat, moorland grazing or agroforestry sites at scale.
However, the union argued more was needed for food production itself, with Exwood saying a “better balance” was needed between policies designed to enhance growing and the environment.
A consultation on the introduction of a labelling scheme for products grown to British standards is also set to take place, the government unveiled on Thursday.
“We still have more questions than answers around the deliverability of these new options,” Exwood said, though. “[The] government is still a long way behind on its [previous] commitments.”
“It’d be easier to get more excited about this were it coming from a government which hadn’t made it a guiding principle of trade policy since 2016 to source the cheapest, most environmentally damaging produce from wherever it could be found, undercutting UK farm standards,” the union’s Leicestershire branch chair, Joe Stanley, added.