Agenda item

To note the agricultural issues for consideration in the Local Plan.

Rob Wise, NFU East Anglia Environment Advisor and Alastair Heinrich, NFU Graduate Trainee presented their report on the current legislation affecting agriculture and how farming businesses were changing.

In response to questions from Councillor Pavitt, Mr Wise said that there was some disconnect between the Agricultural and Environment acts.  He said the development of Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS) and the nature recovery component of the Environment act were on different timescales and the local development of the nature recovery package had been devolved to County Council level, but they did not necessarily have the expertise.

He said that there was an opportunity to protect chalk streams through legislation in terms of buffering and what is allowed to go into the streams.  He said the main issue was the flow of water and its availability, agriculture was a major user, but most came from domestic use and the growth of developments put a strain on the water supply.

He said that this could be addressed by extraction licences to limit how much water is taken out of chalk streams and in the longer term a plan to build two major reservoirs to feed into the water ways. 

Councillor Pavitt said he remained concerned that there was not an appropriate solution for the East of England as reservoirs were dependant on rain fall and this quantity of rainwater could cause a problem to the alkaline nature of the streams.

In response to a question from Councillor Merifield, Mr Heinrich said the land would continue to trap and store carbon whilst the solar panels were in place and as long as there was an adequate removal plan it could be returned to agricultural use once they had been removed. 

Councillor Light said that farmers and growers could support the community by using their expertise to encourage Country Farm Parks, Urban Parks, and the use of small spaces to grow food. 

She said that the district should consider the utilisation of agricultural space to feed into the building industry using local materials for developments, for example wood, sheep’s wool and hemp to reduce the carbon footprint.

She said the Local Plan would benefit from Agri research at the Chesterford Retail Park.

Mr Wise said that he would be pleased to link Local Authorities with local farmers to create stronger relationships and to share expertise.  He said it was important to incorporate into building codes requirements for net zero targets in construction standards, in order to encourage this sort of utilisation of the land for different purposes.  He said the Local Authority needed to take steps to enable Agri research.

Councillor Tayler said this highlighted the tensions of land use, for food, energy and other uses, which took land away from the production of food and could have a negative impact for residents and tourism.  He asked how the Local Plan could help farmers to make the right choices of land use for themselves and for residents.

Mr Wise said that farmers were moving away from artificial pesticides due to productivity, environmental and net zero reasons.  He said there was always a balance when changing the use of land, and it needed to be a local discussion to get the right balance. 

It was agreed that the presentation would be circulated to Members.

The Chair thanked Mr Wise and Mr Heinrich for their presentation and said it would be interesting to see how farmers and residents could help each other.