Member's statement: Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs: 'Belfast Telegraph' Interview
Member's statement by Ms Diana Armstrong on .
- MLA
- Ms Diana Armstrong
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 12 October 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs: 'Belfast Telegraph' Interview
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5785787
Read the official Assembly record
Text
The Agriculture Minister sat down for an in-depth interview with the 'Belfast Telegraph' last week. I want to put a few things from that interview on record. He talked about death threats and an assault: such things are wrong, and I condemn them unreservedly. However, it is the substance of that interview that I want to deal with. The Minister should read his Department's figures. He said that 90% of farmers were doing the right thing and that:
"about 7pc of farmers produce about 70pc of the phosphorus".
Those are his words, not mine. A few minutes later in the interview, he said that, if people keep opposing him, we will have to look at the size of the herd in Northern Ireland, naming dairy. Which is it? If the problem is 7% of farmers, why is the warning being pointed at everybody's stock? Saying, "Work with me, or we will cut your herd" is not working in partnership with industry, and it is not the 7% who will feel the result of that. I ask the Minister's party this straight question: is degrowth now Alliance Party policy for agriculture? The Minister has ruled out a buyout scheme, and I take him at his word on that. A buyout scheme is not needed, however, when it can be done slowly through enough small decisions, cut by cut, until a family farm can see no way forward and the next generation does not take the farm on. On the subject of the nutrients action programme, farmers want clean water — I am yet to meet one who does not — but will not accept being pointed at as though it is their problem alone. The Minister's figures show that it is not. Work with them, Minister, and you will get somewhere; back them into a corner, and you will not. The Minister is right that about 90% of farmers are doing the right thing, so where is the support for those people? In 2025, the Department offered not £1 — not one — in farm capital investment. Farmers being left alone by the Department is not the same as being backed by it. There is a bigger point that the Minister needs to hold on to: food production matters to this country. Taking acres out of production here will not mean that the world eats less; it will mean that it will be grown by somebody else somewhere that has none of the standards that we impose on our farmers. There is no victory in clearing our conscience by importing beef that has been produced off the back of a cleared rainforest. My father held the Agriculture office at a time when a Minister of Agriculture understood that he was there to back the industry. This Minister talks about farming as a set of problems to be managed: it is not. It involves thousands of families, and it is what holds rural Northern Ireland together.
494 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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