Minister looks to the future
With populations rising and food security a priority, the main message to the farming industry at the NFU annual conference was to have confidence in the future.
"With a world population set to top nine billion and increased demand for westernised food such as dairy products and meat goods, demand for food is forecast to rise by 60 per cent by 2050," the Farming Minister George Eustice told the NFU annual conference.
Standing in at the last minute for Defra Minister Owen Paterson, Mr Eustice said a vibrant and profitable UK farming is needed to meet this demand.
This optimistic picture was also the central theme of Peter Kendall's last speech as NFU president, but it came with the warning that has been a constant theme of all of the eight years of his presidency.
The importance of British agriculture in providing necessary food security. This was illustrated by the NFU's campaign last year to show that in a year we only produce enough food to last until August 14.
"Self- sufficiency has gone into reverse," Mr Kendall said. "We are producing 62 per cent of our needs, down from 78 per cent 30 years ago."
The importance of food security was echoed by the minister who expressed "the need to reposition English farming as the solution to many of the problems we face, and to put agriculture back at the heart of our countryside and its communities."
"That is not a view that was always shared by the British Government," said the NFU President. "In his 2007 Oxford Conference speech the then minister David Miliband said 'the future of farming is more about environmental security than food security'.
"The Government has caught up," he said. "The Foresight Report of 2011 set out clearly the global situation: less than 20 years to deliver 40 per cent more food, 30 per cent more fresh water and 50 per cent more energy."
Mr Eustice pointed out the importance of the rural economy which is worth £211 billion a year. "One fifth of the population live there, they support a third of English businesses and small and medium sized enterprises employ 70 per cent of rural employees," he said and admitted that for years, farms and the rural economy have been ignored.
