Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – in the House of Commons am 10:30 am ar 21 Mai 2009.
Hilary Benn
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
10:30,
21 Mai 2009
We put a substantial amount of money into the British agricultural industry through the common agricultural policy. One of the changes that we have made is to shift the balance from production support to supporting farmers for environmentally sustainable farming. The success of agri-environment schemes in the past 21 years, partly in fixing some of the damage that the common agricultural policy at its height created, not least grubbing up hedgerows, is a step in the right direction. In future, we will have to balance the need to grow much more food with the need to do so in a much more environmentally sustainable way because, in the end, soil and water are the raw materials on which food production depends.