The government’s plans for a post-Brexit scheme to support British farming are based on little more than “blind optimism” and risk increasing the UK’s reliance on food imports, a parliamentary inquiry has warned. Ministers had said the new scheme would be used to increase the environmental benefits of agriculture. They said that by the government’s own admission, “its confidence in the scheme looks like blind optimism”. “Farmers, especially the next generation who we will depend on to achieve our combined food production and environmental goals, have been left in the dark. It is simply wrong that Defra’s own failures of business planning should undermine the certainty crucial to a critical national sector,” he said.

Source: The Guardian January 11, 2022 13:28 UTC