Farming in the Uplands - ARCHIVE: Defra

Ev 52 Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee: Evidence
17 November 2010 James Paice MP, Jeremy Eppel and Dan Osgood
we’ve been through in the lowlands, particularly in
the eastern half of the country, making farmers bigger
and therefore more viable. Partly it will be lack of
profit, over successive years, to invest in the future.
One obvious area is winter housing. A lot of upland
farmers still leave their stock out all winter, which is
extensive but can be labour-intensive, because of the
time taken to check them, etc. It also often has
environmental consequences of poaching etc, and it
probably means you have to keep the more robust,
hardy breeds of stock, whereas if you were winter
housing you might be able to have slightly more
economically efficient breeds of stock. I don’t want to
sit here and pretend I have a solution for everybody;
I haven’t. However, winter housing should be
something that, as long as it’s part of a sensible
business plan, in my view, should be part of the Rural
Development Programme, the ability for farmers to
access it for that. I’m not saying everybody would get
it, but in principle it should be suitable, and that
comes back to the earlier discussion about the
direction in which we should be going.
Q234 Chair: Finally, looking at a sustainable future
for the uplands, what place do you think farming will
play in that mix, and do you think we have the balance
right between agri-environmental measures and
production?
Mr Paice: I’m very optimistic about farming’s future,
as a general industry but, as I implied a few minutes
ago, I do think it has to see itself—and I’m afraid this
is a criticism of much of the farming industry—as part
of the food supply chain. If it can be seen like that, it
will have much more economic clout politically. I
don’t just mean here or partisanly, but generally. I do
think, if you look at the global prospects for food over
the next few decades, there is potential for great
prosperity. The uplands have a right and the
opportunity to share in that increased prosperity, but
they have unique challenges and we’ve talked about
them this afternoon. I think there is a good future for
farming in the uplands. I also think it’s critical for the
future of the uplands because, as we touched on
earlier about stocking rates and things like that, the
very beauty of the uplands, which attracts the tourism
that Mr Parish was talking about, which is of greater
economic value to the uplands than farming is, is there
because of farmers. Forgive me, I’ve said this a
number of times. All the dry stone walls that people
go up to see because of the picturesque view, they
weren’t put up with an Arts Council grant; they were
put up to keep sheep in. It is because of farming that
we have that landscape and, therefore, it is essential if
we’re going to maintain that landscape, enhance and
improve it, that farming is part and parcel of it.
Q235 Chair: Just on Mr Parish’s point and Mr
Blenkinsop’s, on actually working with tourism and
diversification to bring money from the tourism
industry into the upland economy, do you think there’s
more we could do to tap into that?
Mr Paice: I’m sure there’s always more we can do to
tap into it, but that’s really a role for DCMS and the
tourism sector. I know, again before the election, when
I was talking to my then colleagues in that team, they
were very enthused by the need to increase rural
tourism. That is within scope of the RDPE, all of
which feeds back to my answer earlier about the need
to make sure we have as much resources in that
programme as possible.
Chair: When you do visit, we can recommend some
very good B&Bs. Minister, can we thank you most
formally for being so patient, so kind and thorough in
answering our questions as part of this inquiry? To
you and your team, thank you very much indeed.
Mr Paice: Thank you very much indeed.
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