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Owen Paterson, former secretary of state for Defra and Northern Ireland, was the guest speaker at the Northern Ireland Meat Exporters Association (NIMEA) dinner in Belfast on Wednesday evening.
He was an active campaigner for Brexit during the referendum campaign last year and has family interests in the hide business, as well as still being an MP for North Shropshire.
His assessment of where UK farming should be when the UK leaves the EU provided plenty of talking points at the event.
Patterson’s vision for UK agriculture was one that competed in the world market, subsidy-free and tariff-free, similar to New Zealand. He acknowledged that this would not take place overnight, but after a relatively short transition period.
Compete
In this scenario, he expects that the most fertile producing land of the UK would be able to produce food to compete in global markets. Farmers in these areas would be freed from the burden of EU regulation, and competitiveness would be achieved and consolidated through innovation, technology and with use of GM welcomed.
Patterson was also open-minded about the use of hormones in beef production, referring to a past study on German bull beef which showed that these bulls had similar levels of hormones as treated US steer beef.
The Paterson model would open the UK to global suppliers of agricultural produce, with the wider population able to access cheaper food, which ultimately benefits the overall economy.
While he is against providing direct support for food production, he did not rule out government money being used to support farmers on more marginal land. However, his emphasis was on the environment and making it attractive to visitors and tourists, not what farmers might produce.
It would be easy to dismiss Paterson’s comments as typical of a former minister who has now moved on to the speaking circuit.
However, the reality is that his cabinet tenure was ended by then prime minister Cameron, who was in the opposite camp in the Brexit debate.
Paterson’s view on Britain and trade coincides with many of the senior members of the current cabinet, particularly those involved with negotiating the UK’s exit from the EU. It is likely that their views on agriculture will be similarly aligned and any comments from the current Defra Secretary Andrea Leadsom on future farm policy have generally been focused on environmental support.
Farming and industry lobby organisations have a major job to do if they want to see the present model of active farming across the UK sustained. Otherwise, it will be a case of farmers in the most fertile regions trying to compete at world prices, with a national park type arrangement elsewhere.
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