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Farming
Farming NFU hosts first-of-a-kind workshop on emerging environmental markets
Environmental markets pose a potential source of income for farmers and growers and exploring opportunities to engage with them will be critical for food production and environmental outcomes
On 1 November, the NFU hosted an innovative ‘Environmental opportunities for agriculture’ workshop at its London office to explore the opportunities for farmers and growers to engage in environmental markets from a farming, policy, and financial perspective.
The event brought together representatives from many key stakeholder organisations that shape the development of these markets. These included farmers, farmer clusters, investors, financial institutions, project developers and policymakers.
“This multi-stakeholder event was the first conversation of its kind and we hope this can act as a springboard for further discussions for the long-term benefit of the farming community.”
Collaboration is crucial
NFU President Minette Batters opened the event with an address that highlighted the importance of defining new markets ‘on our own terms’.
She explained that engaging collaboratively in the development of environmental markets will be critical to finding solutions for delivering food production and environmental outcomes in a way supported by both public and private financial funds.
NFU chief economic adviser Rohit Kaushish provided a useful and concise outline of the NFU’s activity on environmental markets so far and offered greater clarity on what it means for farmers and growers.
He explained that market development and investment will have an effect on future generations of farmers and producers, so it is important to get this right.
As a result, the NFU has carefully designed its ‘5 Key Environmental Market Principles’.
Balancing the opportunities and challenges
Based on these principles, the workshop was divided into a series of focussed sessions.
Identifying the opportunity: This allowed participants to reflect on what constitutes a viable opportunity for investment and development.
Financing the opportunity: Following on from this clarification of suitable opportunities, the workshop moved on to discuss mechanisms for getting new and alternative markets off the ground and ensuring that any market development is sustainable.
The role of government policy: Important to this workshop was recognition that government needs to be involved for any environmental markets to develop successfully. Participants explored how public policy initiatives can support emerging markets and inspire confidence.
The top three opportunities and challenges: Bringing together the insights of the preceding sessions, the workshop evaluated the opportunities to seize and the most pressing challenges for agricultural businesses and investors.
Following each session, there was a collaborative feedback process in which ideas were exchanged on how farmers and growers can best engage with the environmental markets. If structured correctly, investment through such markets presents an opportunity to support long-term resilience in the businesses and natural systems that underpin British food production.
Bringing the event to a close, Minette reflected that the workshop had been a great success and paid tribute to the willingness of all stakeholders to begin to work together on an area that can be complex.
She recognised that, if structured correctly, the potential benefit to farmers, growers, and agri-food businesses of engaging with environmental markets could be significant and that the incentives for industry-based collaboration had never been stronger.
The potential benefit of engaging with environmental markets could be significant Credit: Chris/Unsplash
Farming
Farming remains highly vulnerable
NFU President Minette Batters has responded to the Chancellor’s Autumn statement.
She said: “There is much to be welcomed from today’s announcement particularly on investment in research and development and the roll out of gigabit broadband technology to the hardest to reach rural communities.
“While we await further clarity, these commitments would enable Britain’s farmers to be more productive and efficient, while continuing to produce sustainable food and achieve ambitious net zero goals.
“Like other businesses, it’s rocketing costs for energy – central to producing our food – as well as huge hikes in feed, and fertiliser, which is putting Britain’s farmers and growers under the most intense pressure.
“We expect an announcement on future support for businesses before Christmas and it is vital this new targeted approach for business beyond next April includes UK food production and the food supply chain.
“With a safe, affordable domestic food supply being central to our nation’s success, we believe there are robust grounds for the government to classify our industry as a vulnerable sector when it comes to energy provision.
“We also heard the Chancellor committing that government departments will have their overall budgets increased in real terms.
“We trust this will allow Defra to deliver a properlyfunded Agricultural Transition Plan to ensure Britain’s farmers have the confidence to invest and grow their businesses, in turn enabling British food, farming and the country to thrive.”
Ahead of the Autumn statement, Batters had written an open letter to the Defra Secretary of State Thérèse Coffey, outlining the many challenges faced by the sector, highlighting pledges the current Prime Minister made to an NFU hustings event earlier in the year. Mr Sunak pledged to:
– Establish a new food security target, including a statutory duty to monitor and report on domestic food production levels annually. – Chair a UK-wide annual food security summit at 10 Downing Street, in partnership with NFU and stakeholders. – Introduce a new target for public sector organisations to buy 50% of their food locally. – Use the powers in the Agriculture Act to ensure that supply chains are made fairer. – Review planning rules to ensure that high-quality farmland is sufficiently protected. – Make farmers a priority in all future trade deals…[and] build on existing support mechanisms to help farmers export to the world’s emerging markets. – Reintroduce the role of the UK Rural Advocate and increase representation of farmers at all levels of government.
Credit: Belinda Fewings/Unsplash
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