🚨 Major Court Victory for Food Standards The High Court has declared Defra’s “unlabelled Frankenstein foods” scheme unlawful. Precision bred organisms were being fast-tracked into our food system without labelling or adequate safety checks, prioritising commercial interests over consumer rights and organic farmers. This is exactly why we need strong domestic legislation with proper safeguards, not a race to the bottom via trade deals or deregulation. Food security means high standards, transparency, and backing British producers who meet them. Restore a legal duty to secure Britain’s food supply. Bring back the principles of Article 39. Grow more. Store more. Back British farmers. #SaveBritishFarming #Article39 #FoodStandards

We are facing a potential crisis and the Treasury and DEFRA need to start working coherently on food security — now. British farming is already under huge pressure from the inheritance tax changes, subsidy chaos and rising costs. Now four more problems are hitting together: • the Iran crisis threatening global fertiliser supply; • new El Niño warnings which could damage harvests across the southern hemisphere leading to global shortages; • environmental charges increasing costs of fertiliser; and • supermarkets being encouraged to keep food prices down, which would feed back down the supply chain to squeeze producers There is a limit to how many extra costs farmers can absorb. The danger is not empty shelves tomorrow. It is a growing squeeze over the next 12–18 months: • less fertiliser used • lower crop yields • less confidence to invest • greater reliance on increasingly expensive imports Right now government does not appear to have a coherent approach to these huge risks. Ministers across the Treasury and DEFRA need to get a grip on our food security. Saying “we can import more” is not good enough. The window to act is closing fast. @VictoriaAtkins @EmmaforWycombe

Lost for words. Never thought I’d see a British govt trying to set food prices. If there is one highly competitive sector it is food retailing. Do we really want to live in a country where the state sets these prices? thetimes.com/article/3ec704f…

Lost for words. Never thought I’d see a British govt trying to set food prices. If there is one highly competitive sector it is food retailing. Do we really want to live in a country where the state sets these prices? thetimes.com/article/3ec704f…

Miliband who put Blue Labour architect Maurice Glasman in the lords, really?!!! @labourlewis

You were elected to protect the environment and green belt but instead you gave us yimbyism and ‘build baby build’ that no one asked for. If you want to save the Labour Party start with saving our green spaces.

Agree with your first statement. I totally disagree with your second. This decision to push farmers to rewilding has to be a good thing but needs far better management. DEFRA like most government departments seems to be run by graduates who don't get out in the real world.

Dan removal is a huge must.

Dam removal is holy work.

Long article this, here’s the gist of it - Man named Mr Greed complains he can’t raise French cows in Devon anymore because the landowner wants his land back - for re wilding. Re wilding is threatening tenant farmers like never before and through them our food security - says the author, before going on to point out (if you run the numbers) that at risk tenant farmers are responsible for just 7% of farmland in Britain. Here’s what it doesn’t tell you - farming uses 75% of Britain’s land, it’s the single biggest cause of our wildlife crisis (we took their homes) and most of our farmland is used to grow crops to feed animals in an incredibly inefficient food chain system. In fact we could feed 16m more people if we just grew crops to feed ourselves directly - using the same amount of land. And/or we could give 75% of our farmland back to nature - if we all stop eating animals. That’s the scope we have, to allow nature back in and still feed ourselves. Plenty. It’s not either or and re wilding is not the enemy of farming. telegraph.co.uk/business/202…

A group of us - Chris Packham, Guy Singh-Watson, Dale Vince and I - have written to the Soil Association asking it to stop certifying farmed salmon. 20 years ago I led the team developing organic fish farming standards. I now realise that was a bad mistake.