Farming is the backbone of our rural communities and a vital part of our national life. Across Waveney Valley, farmers work tirelessly to produce high-quality food, care for the countryside, and support local jobs. They deserve policies that provide certainty, reward their contribution, and help them plan confidently for the future. I regularly meet with farmers and agricultural organisations across the constituency, and their concerns have informed the issues I have raised in Parliament. These meetings have directly shaped my work in Parliament, from questions to Defra Ministers on the future of the Sustainable Farming Incentive, to debates on low-quality imports that undercut our farmers, to letters to Ministers on natural flood management.

Too often, however, farmers have faced uncertainty. From deeply concerning inheritance tax proposals, which I consistently challenged and pressed Ministers to rethink, to abrupt changes to the Sustainable Farming Incentive, confidence has been undermined at a time when stability is needed most. Farmers need to be able to depend on long-term funding support in order to have the confidence to move towards more nature-friendly farming and invest in natural flood management. An essential part of that is tackling the power of the supermarkets. For too long, large multinational corporations have driven a race to the bottom in the prices they pay farmers, leaving farmers to bear all the risk while corporate profits stay protected.

The UK rightly has some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world, something our farmers are proud of and something the government must work with farmers to improve further. That is why we should not import food from countries with lower animal welfare standards. This undercuts our farmers. 

Farmers should be treated as partners in delivering food security, environmental stewardship, and natural flood management, not as an afterthought.