The government, through Defra, has lost sight of the need to deliver on production while focusing on its policies on climate change and the environment.
This is the view of Graham Ward, right, director and chief executive of Stockbridge Technology Centre, who told FPJ that the plethora of delivery agencies working across 19 government departments involved in food-chain policy is confusing matters, and has moved emphasis away from the area of prime importance.
“Defra is majoring on climate change and the environment, and my own view is that the production-land economic management agenda is now lower down the department’s priorities. The ministry for agriculture used to be the delivery agent, but now the government wants to be part of strategy development and then have absolutely no involvement in delivery. [It does not want to be] the originator and accountable owner of policy.”
He said that chosen delivery partners such as Natural England, The Environment Agency and The Forestry Commission are “all-powerful non-department public bodies, but [there is] no mention of food/fuel/fibre or primary production.
“There are lots of NGOs, or quangos, which act as powerful lobbies in policy and strategy outcomes, but as powerful as these bodies, including those representing land managers, are, they do not have the clout and resources of the NGDPs. And Defra isn’t there anymore; the required level of expertise within the ministry has gone.”
Ward concluded: “It is time that we started to talk seriously about an agency to look at food production and productive land management, to act as the focus for these activities of our rural areas. We need a non-department public body to be able to balance the outcomes of the policy and strategy meetings.”
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