Debate contribution: Farm Support and Development Programme

Debate contribution by Mr Andrew Muir on 14 May 2024.

MLA

Mr Andrew Muir

Party at the time

Alliance Party

Date

14 May 2024

Type

Debate contribution (made as a minister)

Business

Ministerial Statements

Heading

Farm Support and Development Programme

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4489719

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Madam Principal Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to make a statement to the Assembly on the farm support and development programme. As the Balmoral show is opening tomorrow, I felt that it was important to update the Assembly on future farm support. At the outset, however, I want to express my thanks and gratitude to countless people in Northern Ireland’s farming community for their warm welcome and the kindness offered to me to date. I have experienced many great examples of good farming practices in Northern Ireland since taking up my role as Minister, examples that I am determined to profile and showcase. I am determined to grasp the opportunity provided to me as Minister to translate and communicate the great things happening across farming today to the general public in a clear and easily accessible manner, building resilience and looking o a strong and successful future ahead. I do not come to the job with negativity, doom and gloom but with boundless positivity and a genuine, strong desire to work in partnership with others. As many of you will be aware, the farm support and development programme is a new programme that my Department has co-designed with stakeholder organisations to target farm support to meet the bespoke needs of Northern Ireland.

The overall objective is to transition to a more sustainable farming sector by seeking to implement policies and strategies that benefit our climate and environment while, very importantly, supporting our economically and socially significant agri-food sector. It has been long in gestation, and, for many, the details that I outline today will come as no surprise. I thank officials for all the work done to date, especially when Ministers were not in post, to develop the relevant initiatives, packages and measures in close collaboration with stakeholders.

As Minister, my vision for the time ahead aligns closely with the farm support and development programme and is to ensure both economic and environmental sustainability. I am keen to see the initiatives, packages and measures delivered at pace and for our ambition to be strong. I want to secure sustainable productivity and assist the development of effective, functioning supply chains, ensuring food security and high standards of disease control and public and animal health. I also want to do more to recognise the importance of the food that we produce to every aspect of our well-being. Working in partnership, I will shortly bring forward a new Northern Ireland food strategy framework that will ensure that the policies that affect our food system are aligned and that we can contribute to achieving health, environmental, economic and societal goals. As Minister, I am clear that we must also tackle the reality of climate change. We cannot ignore what we see in front of us, with the severe weather patterns experienced this year alone severely impacting some of our towns, villages, communities and businesses. We must act now. The impact of climate change is particularly acute for agriculture, with extreme weather, for example, having a prolonged effect. In early March this year, I attended the sixty-fourth George Scott Robertson lecture at Queen's University. The presentation by Dr Pete Falloon from the Met Office unveiled critical insights into the future trajectory of UK weather patterns: drier, hotter summers alongside milder, wetter winters, characterised by more intense rainfall events. Building long-term resilience and adaptation and achieving a genuinely just transition are absolutely key. Achieving improved environmental sustainability is paramount. I want to move to address ammonia- and phosphorus-related issues by incentivising and enabling actions that protect and enhance our natural and marine environment so that we can achieve better guardianship of water and air quality, soil health and biodiversity. An environmentally sustainable agri-food industry will also provide a key part of the jigsaw to secure the recovery of Lough Neagh and improve water quality across Northern Ireland. I acknowledge that significant work has already been undertaken to chart the way forward. I thank officials and stakeholders for their commitment to working in partnership in the co-design of the farm support and development programme. The principles of co-design, partnership working and effective communication will be key as the programme is introduced in a phased manner in the months and years ahead. By way of background, before I talk in a bit more detail about the future agricultural policy proposals, a consultation exercise on the policy proposals associated with the future agricultural policy framework was undertaken in December 2021, and the responses informed 54 policy decisions that were announced in the House in March 2022. Input from the agricultural policy stakeholder group, which was established in June 2021, has been essential to the development of the programme. The group brings together representatives from across the food, farming and environment sectors and ensures that their views are understood and properly considered during the development of the programme. This co-design approach provides an exemplary model for policy development that could be applied more generally across all Departments. I especially thank the relevant stakeholders, including members of the Dairy Council for Northern Ireland; the Northern Ireland Agricultural Producers' Association (NIAPA); Northern Ireland Environment Link, which incudes the National Trust, Nature Friendly Farming Network, the RSPB and Ulster Wildlife; the Northern Ireland Food and Drink Association (NIFDA); the Northern Ireland Meat Exporters Association (NIMEA); the Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU); the British Veterinary Association (BVA); and the Northern Ireland Grain Trade Association (NIGTA), for their commitment to work together as part of the stakeholder group, which I met recently. It has provided and continues to provide a key forum for discussion at each stage of the policy development process. Before I move on to outline the elements of the farm support and development programme, I want to first consider the significance of our agri-food sector. Northern Ireland has a unique farm family structure. Farm families work hard to produce quality food while working hand-in-hand with nature. I very much welcome the event organised by the Ulster Farmers' Union at the end of February celebrating the family farm. Since becoming AERA Minister, I have visited a range of farms, from a dairy farm and a horticulture farm in County Down and an arable farm in County Armagh to a sheep farm in County Derry/Londonderry. I have noted the massive respect that I have heard, on many occasions, for the work of the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) in educating those coming into the sector and those managing our farm businesses. What farmers produce is literally life-giving, as it provides sustenance to millions of people, and life-affirming through the sector's value to communities, businesses, our environment and, indeed, the very social fabric of everyday life in Northern Ireland. I have put on the record, consistently, that we need to call time on the idea that the environment and agriculture are pitted against each other. That is wrong and does a real injustice to the many positive examples of great farming practice across Northern Ireland. Since becoming Minister, I have had very positive engagement with, amongst others, the Ulster Farmers' Union and Northern Ireland Environment Link. At those meetings, I have stressed my desire that we work in partnership to deliver a more resilient and sustainable agri-food sector as custodians of the countryside. There are many great stories to be told of environmental action in practice, and I intend to continue to showcase them. Our farmers are also key to our future food security. Climate change, conflict and population rise will provide challenges to our food supplies, but I am focused on ensuring longer-term solutions to prevent crises and preserve our food security. Funding for the programme comes largely from the Treasury's earmarked funding for agriculture, environment and rural support, which is guaranteed to the end of the current Parliament. Some £329 million has been allocated in this financial year. It is imperative that any future settlement reflects our policy objectives and ambitions and is an absolute minimum. I want to see significant growth in the funding awarded. The farm support and development programme is made up of a range of schemes and actions, which I will now outline. Some of them are already being seen as exemplars by my counterparts in the rest of the UK and Ireland. Before I go into detail, I will reference the concerns about the schemes being overly complicated. I recognise those concerns and have asked that the simplification, accessibility and bureaucracy of the scheme be placed as a standing item on the agriculture policy stakeholder group's agenda. I have also asked that each scheme be tested against a set of criteria, which has been agreed following consultation with the group, to ensure that the initiatives, packages and measures are simple and easy to access. As announced in March 2022, the new farm sustainability payment will provide a balance between providing a safety net that will help a farm business withstand shocks that are beyond its ability to manage effectively and encouraging farm businesses to be sustainable, efficient, competitive and able to manage risk proactively. My current planning assumption is that, from 2025, farm businesses will need to activate five entitlements on five hectares of eligible land to meet the requirements of the farm sustainability transition payment, and, from 2026, to meet the requirements of the payment going forward. With the introduction of the farm sustainability transition payment in 2025, current basic payment scheme entitlements will expire and be replaced with farm sustainability payment entitlements. The full farm sustainability payment is planned to go live in 2026. That will include changes to land eligibility, new farm sustainability standards and a new penalty regime. Those changes will be communicated well in advance. A number of conditionalities are planned, such as compliance with the new farm sustainability standards, participation in the soil nutrient health scheme, development of a nutrient management plan, the provision of specified genetic profiles — or DNA tagging — on-farm performance data of bovine animals and participation in the carbon footprinting project. As previously announced, the beef sustainability package aims to help ensure the future viability of our beef sector by helping the sector to keep pace with its competitors, improve resilience and, importantly, reduce greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions. It comprises two elements that are aimed at improving farm productivity while at the same time reducing greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions. The beef carbon reduction scheme, which commenced on 1 January 2024, incentivises farm businesses to reduce the age at slaughter of clean beef cattle over a four-year phased implementation period. It is planned that the suckler cow scheme will go live in early 2025. It will incentivise farm businesses to reduce the age at first calving and/or the calving interval of beef bred suckler cows over a four-year phased implementation period. CAFRE is providing training to help farm businesses understand the changes to management practices that are needed. The environmental challenges that need to be tackled in Northern Ireland are substantial, and I know that. Through the farming with nature package, there is significant potential for farm businesses and land managers across all land types in Northern Ireland to make vital, positive contributions to tackling those environmental impacts head-on and to be properly recognised by society for doing so. The package will initially focus on halting and reversing the trends in nature decline through maintaining, restoring and creating habitats that are important for species diversity and improving connectivity between habitat areas. Work is ongoing to develop the package, including an orderly transition from the environmental farming scheme. Environmental payments will, as far as possible, seek to recognise and reward the public goods provided. That approach aims to encourage the environment to be seen as another on-farm enterprise that has the potential to become a profit centre within an overall sustainable farming model. It will also assist farm businesses and land managers to make an economic return on the environmental assets that they create and manage appropriately. Although work on the farming with nature package is not as advanced as other schemes that I have mentioned, I have asked my officials to prioritise that area of work over the coming months. From 2026, the existing cross-compliance requirements will be replaced by new farm sustainability standards that are focused on environmental, animal and human health, and animal welfare issues, where the incidence of non-compliance has either increased or has seen limited improvement in the past five years. The exact make-up of those new standards and the underpinning set of requirements are under development. Applicants to the farm sustainability payment scheme, beef sustainability package and the farming with nature package will need to comply with the new farm sustainability standards. The standards will have an associated penalty regime, which is also under development. The soil nutrient health scheme is a groundbreaking policy intervention that is assisting farm businesses in planning their farm nutrient management more effectively, with the long-term aim of reducing agricultural impacts on water quality. The scheme represents an investment of up to £45 million in our farming sector. Participating in the scheme provides farm businesses with important information to help manage soil nutrients and farm carbon. Crucially, participation in the soil nutrient health scheme will be a condition of the receipt of the new farm sustainability payment and the farming with nature package. It requires participants to register for the scheme and complete the training offered by CAFRE. The scheme is being rolled out zonally. Following receipt of their soil analysis results, farm businesses will be offered training by CAFRE to help them understand those results and develop a nutrient management plan. That plan will help farm businesses provide additional nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, to meet crop requirements. In so doing, it will significantly reduce run-off of nitrogen and phosphorus into our waterways. We can all agree that that is something that we want to achieve. The ruminant genetics programme aims to drive improvements in productivity and environmental performance in the ruminant livestock sectors. The programme will be delivered by my Department in partnership with the agri-food industry. Genetic improvement will contribute significantly to achieving the target reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The first phase of the programme will provide farm businesses with the data and evidence to make better-informed breeding decisions to advance genetic gain in dairy and feed animals. Training will also be provided by CAFRE to assist the industry to maximise the programme's benefits. My Department is seeking to ensure that as many of the new policy interventions as possible help drive down the agriculture industry's carbon footprint. The farming for carbon project focuses on actions to reduce carbon emissions and, by association, other emissions from farms and on actions to offset carbon emissions through sequestration. The principle of encouraging farming for carbon as a business enterprise on-farm will also be developed. My Department has collaborated with DEFRA to include a new Northern Ireland element in the DEFRA dairy demonstrator research project, which opened for applications in November 2023. Furthermore, the carbon footprinting project plans to commence in 2024. Northern Ireland agriculture relies on an industry structure with an ever-increasing age profile of farmers. Well-educated farmers have been shown to be more open to adopting advanced technology and environmentally friendly practices. A reduction in the average age of farmers, as well as accelerating the transition to those with relevant training and skills, would provide a workforce that is more open to innovation and change. The farming for generations pilot scheme is planned to commence in autumn 2024 and will support farm businesses in planning for a timely and orderly transition to a new generation.

The pilot scheme will provide the farm family with the knowledge and skills to help with the transfer of the management and leadership responsibility.

Plans are also progressing to launch new knowledge transfer schemes to replace the business development groups and the farm family key skills scheme, which have recently come to an end. They will build on the success of outgoing schemes, using proven methods to equip farmers to address today's challenges and develop their businesses in a sustainable way. CAFRE plans to introduce the schemes to farmers during 2024. A new, innovative package of training and support is also planned for agri-professionals that will be designed to help them better assist their farming clients through a period of change. The Northern Ireland production horticulture sector makes an important contribution to the economy, the environment and human health. There is scope to develop the sector further. The horticulture schemes will aim to do that over the coming years. An increase in local horticulture productivity will help to improve overall agri-food sector productivity and sustainability, grow the economy and help to ensure the stability of the food supply chain by increasing local resourcing. It is currently planned that the horticulture sector will have a bespoke range of schemes. The horticulture sector growth support scheme will aim to commence in autumn 2024, with the establishment of subsector growth groups, along with a growers' academy. An innovation support scheme will aim to commence in autumn 2025. The capital investment scheme is planned to help farm businesses to improve their environmental performance and business efficiency. In particular, support will be focused on assisting the industry to meet net zero targets and reduce the environmental impact of farm sectors. That will be achieved by the adoption of precision technology and equipment to reduce ammonia emissions, carbon emissions and nutrient loss. The supply chain schemes aim to assist in improving collaboration between producers and growers in the supply chain, encouraging them to innovate, problem solve and add value beyond what they can achieve in isolation. A range of supply chain schemes will be launched during 2025 for new and existing groups to pursue opportunities for growth; to develop products, processes and systems; and to address longer-term strategic supply chain challenges affecting the agri-food sector. In January 2023, the sheep industry task force produced its report to identify the needs of the sheep sector in Northern Ireland and a proposed package to encourage its development. I welcome that report. My officials are working to better understand the strategic needs of the sheep sector, and I will consider deploying levers to meet those needs. I intend to discuss that with my officials over the coming weeks. The farm support and development programme is supported by a full programme of communications to ensure that farm businesses are well informed of and prepared for the challenges ahead. The purpose of the statement is to provide an overview of the farm support and development programme. Participation in that programme is voluntary, and there is no market or policy penalty for non-participation. It is clear that there are challenges ahead for us all. There is something in the farm support and development programme for every farm business to help to ensure that, together, we transition to a more sustainable farming sector.

I thank the Member for his question. Climate change is, obviously, an issue in the Chamber as well today. The detail is important. I am genuinely committed to the process of co-design, which is how this has been successfully developed thus far. There is a need to find a way forward so that we have resilience in the sector. That has been a key concern for a number of farm businesses, given the weather issues over the past number of months. The farm sustainability payment is about building resilience and ensuring that we are able to equip them. I understand that we need to have a safety net for businesses. I am also conscious that, given the funding that we have, business cases must satisfy in terms of value for money. It is about striking a balance and recognising the need for resilience for food security but also allowing them to move forward successfully. Let us be clear: I am very hopeful about the sector. I look forward to the Balmoral show this week. There are challenges, but I think that, collectively, we all want to put our shoulder to the wheel and to see whether we can find a way forward to address those challenges. I came in as a Minister focused on solutions, and that is what I will do over the time ahead.

I thank the Member for his question. There are a number of aspects to it. I addressed the matter of complexity in my statement. It is important that, when we go forward, we check everything around the complexity and the ability to ensure that it is simple and easy to access. I have asked, as part of today's statement, for that to be considered going forward. If there are concerns from the stakeholder group, I am happy to talk to the Member outside the Chamber, and we can talk through some of those concerns. There is a lot of detail in relation to this, and we need to work up how each individual scheme will operate. It is important that we do that. Over the time ahead, there will be much more detail on it. I felt that it was important that I came to the Chamber today to outline the statement and take questions from Members. The easier thing to do would have been to issue a written ministerial statement on Thursday at the Balmoral show, but I felt that it was important to come here, because one of the benefits of devolution is having Ministers in post who are accountable to the Assembly. I am also happy to come to the Committee, if necessary, to go through more on the issue.

3,606 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:22 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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