New age for agriculture
Posted by Philip Dunne, MP for Ludlow, at 11:54, Thu 4 March 2010:
Population growth presents one of the biggest global challenges of the century. Feeding the human population is a crucial task for the world’s farmers. Politicians must develop the right conditions to enable food security at both a global and a national level.
But over the last decade British farmers and their produce have been regarded as dispensable, with the Government content to see food imports soar.
At last week’s NFU conference Conservatives launched policies for farming - a New Age of Agriculture - which includes key conditions for a thriving agricultural sector.
These include promoting fair competition by honest country of origin food labelling and a supermarket ombudsman to enforce a code of practice: both measures will help ensure the fair treatment of suppliers. Reducing the burden of regulation would mean fewer on-farm inspections and greater emphasis on voluntary schemes for self-regulation.
Conservatives will ensure a robust negotiation over the 2013 review of the Common Agricultural Policy; and an animal health strategy that promotes a level playing field at Britain's high animal welfare standards.
In Shropshire, farming retains a crucial role within our rural economy. 51% of the Ludlow constituency is designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, where farmers are the primary custodians of the landscape and habitat.
The industry should look forward to a rewarding future under a Conservative government which wants it to succeed and believes that farming matters.
Comments
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Posted by Barry Edward Capsey, 12:24, Thu 4 March 2010: (Is this post abusive?) #
If we left the EU, there would be NO NEED to robustly negotiate with Europe over anything. We could also rescind such joys as the close to useless 'energy saving', toxic light bulbs, recover and control OUR fishing grounds, firmly plug our porous borders, hammer some sense into the 'Elfansafety' nonsense etc. Seems to me that a promise of an 'IN or OUT' EU referendum would regain 99% of the votes presently heading for UKIP, and send Conservatives into government without the current serious risk of a hung parliament. There would be no loss of trade between Britain and Europe, we buy far more from them than we sell to them. We would continue to trade internationally as does eg Norway and Switzerland, both nations have all the er 'benefits' of membership, but without being run by Bruxelles.
Posted by tony phillips, 13:18, Thu 4 March 2010: (Is this post abusive?) #
The 'overpopulation' issue is just one of the 'fear'factor issues being put about by people with a vested interest in this myth. the whole of western Europe is not maintaining the birth rates to keep pace with deaths, the statistics state that the average European family has 1.8 children which means that the people of these countries are in serious decline. Compare this figure with Muslim families where the average is 8.1 per family, this together with all the main parties in the Uk and the governments of Europe, persuading and promoting white people in particular to have abortions, you have legal genocide of the indigenous populations. Islam and muslims do not believe in contraception or abortion and, we have the UK government telling us that we as a country cannot sustain 70 million people and yet, it was the Labour government who callously let in three million immigrants from 2000 onwards to force multiculturalism onto this country and to gain votes from the immigrants who were let in. This happened without much opposition from the Conservatives. It is wrong for the establishment to bellyache about food production and issues concerning farmers when ministers who can do something and should do something about the immigration issue, keep silent.