Opinion Article - Diana Armstrong, UUP candidate, Fermanagh & South Tyrone

It is imperative that MPs at Westminster elevate agriculture in Northern Ireland to the forefront of strategic planning and policy making as currently NI produces food for 10million people in the UK. This source of top quality, traceable food is essential to feed the indigenous nation and there is more work to be done to assist enterprising farmers to expand and further increase outputs.

A sustainable resolution must be found to the bovine TB situation, which I understand is not easy, particularly given that the Courts have ruled against the wildlife intervention scheme and the Minister doesn’t appear as if he will challenge that case.

The high incidence of TB will not be resolved by cutting the animal market value for disease reactors, such a reduction would be classed as immoral and wrong by the general farming community.

Currently Fermanagh & South Tyrone is one of the significant heartlands of agricultural production. As a Westminster MP I will work to ensure a replacement ring-fenced, inflation based farm support programme is introduced, along with a guaranteed commitment to a 10 year funding plan to drive forward productivity and efficiencies as well as meeting climate change objectives.

Farming has been hit hard by the Protocol and now Windsor Framework regulations, particularly in terms of provision of veterinary medicines and movement of livestock. I stand firm along with colleagues in the Ulster Unionist Party in my commitment to find solutions to the imposition of EU regulations which work against this important sector in the NI economy. A permanent solution was found to the human medicine issue and I argue that the same solution can and should be applied for the veterinary medicine stalement.

It is increasingly frustrating to see farmers getting almost all of the blame for causing harm to the environment. It appears that they are easy picking for society to blame, but farmers are the custodians and the back bone of our rural economy and it goes against the grain of dedicated farmers to cause damage to the land they work so hard to protect. Other individuals, business and community sectors can equally play their part in improving the environment.

If farmers are required to reduce productivity, we need to ask where the replacement food to feed the nation will come from? Will it be Brazil, Argentinia, the Middle East or indeed China? None of these countries have food standards protections to match those applied in Northern Ireland.

Finally, farmers still cannot negotiate the sale prices for their own production. They have to take the price they are left with whenever the processors and retailers take their cut. Farmers must be rewarded with prices which reflect the value of their high quality outputs, that allows them to meet input charges and live sustainably on the land they love so well.

As an MP at Westminster, and someone who has lived in a farming family for two generations, I will work assiduously to promote the interests of farmers and to ensure that climate change mitigations are proportionate and manageable up to 2050.