Lord Kennedy of Southwark – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Kennedy of Southwark on 2015-12-16.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the potential benefit of agricultural technologies to farmers.

Lord Gardiner of Kimble

We considered the evidence on the benefits of agricultural technologies to farmers when we developed our Agri-Tech Strategy in 2013. This included OECD evidence that growth in agricultural productivity depends on three factors: (i) technological change (innovation); (ii) technical efficiency (the ability of farmers to access the best technologies); and (iii) economies of scale.

The Agri-Tech Strategy recognised that we had not been as successful in recent decades as some of our competitors in getting new agricultural technologies from research to the farm. This is why we are investing £160 million through the Strategy to help rebuild the pipeline of innovation.