Josh MacAlister MP has welcomed the Government’s new long-term plan for farming while renewing his call for Cumbria to be given greater control over farm funding and land management.
The Government’s Farming 2050: Growing England’s Future roadmap commits to maintaining domestic food production at least at its current level, recognising food security as part of national security.
The plan brings farming, food, environmental and land-use policies together in a single framework extending to 2050. It focuses on profitable and productive farms, environmental sustainability and greater resilience to rising costs, climate change and global disruption.
Josh has repeatedly pressed ministers to recognise the distinctive needs of Cumbria’s family, livestock and upland farms. He has brought local farmers together for discussions, made the case for a locally led funding pilot and worked to ensure Cumbria is included in the Uplands Transformation programme.
He is now arguing that farming and land-management powers should form part of Cumbria’s future devolution arrangements.
Josh MacAlister MP said:
“Family farms are the backbone of our rural economy in West Cumbria. They produce our food, sustain rural communities and care for landscapes that are known around the world.
“Farmers have understandably been frustrated by years of changing schemes and decisions made by officials who do not always understand the practical realities of farming in places such as Ennerdale, Wasdale and the Western Lakes.
“The new roadmap contains important commitments, particularly the promise to maintain domestic food production and the recognition that productive farming and environmental stewardship must go together. The increased support for upland and moorland farming is also welcome.
“But a national plan must be flexible enough to reflect local conditions. I have been making the case directly to ministers for a Cumbrian pilot that would give farmers here a much stronger role in deciding how farm and nature-recovery funding is used.
“A Mayor for Cumbria could give us a powerful new route to negotiate those responsibilities and budgets from government. My ambition is for a bespoke Cumbrian farming settlement, designed by and with our farmers rather than handed down by Whitehall.
“That would mean national funding and standards, but decisions made much closer to the land and the communities affected by them.”
Josh MacAlister MP 