'Labour abandoning farmers when they need support the most'

We Brits love nothing more than complaining about the weather. And we have been blessed with a lot to complain about - from the 18 wettest months since records began, to now a blistering summer which is smashing records again.

Although we all might complain, it is our farmers who have the most right to. These extremes of weather are having a devastating impact on their businesses. And alongside the family farm tax and theabrupt closure of the sustainable farming incentive, many farm businesses are being pushed to the brink.

Farming is becoming an increasingly unpredictable and risky business. With each passing season, it is harder to forecast what the weather will be like in order to know what crops to establish and when. And when it comes to harvest time, do they risk leaving it a couple more weeks to maximise their yields, or go early to avoid blistering heat or floods destroying their crops, accepting less income? Or for livestock farmers, there is the worry about how to feed their animals when their grazing pastures are either underwater or dessicated.

Now, more than ever, we need to be there for our farmers, ensuring they have alternative sources of income to keep their businesses afloat if and when crops fail. We also have to support them to bolster the resilience of their land in order that they can adapt to the extreme weather that climate change is already bringing, and will continue to bring

But at a time when farmers need support, Labour are abandoning them.

The most important lever the government should be using to help farmers is the Environmental Land Management schemes (ELMs). ELMs were the Conservative-introduced replacement for the deeply flawed Common Agricultural Policy, which subsidised farmers based on how much land they farmed. The Common Agricultural Policy incentivised farmers to rip out hedgerows and plough up their field margins, to farm every inch of land they could and unlock the maximum amount of state subsidy.

Outside the EU, the Conservatives rightly served notice on this scheme. Under ELMs, the government no longer pays farmers purely based on how much land they farm. Instead, farmers are now rewarded for farming in a resilient way and supported to reduce pollution into rivers, create natural flood defences, and turn unproductive land into woodlands for people to enjoy; the list is endless.

They also create new opportunities for farmers to diversify their income and improve their bottom line. Farmers who restore nature and farm more sustainably can often see their profits increase and their day-to-day input costs decline.

Farmers, rural communities, and nature were all working together under the new schemes that make the most out of taxpayers' money whilst adapting and protecting farmers from the new reality.

The problem is that the government is seriously undermining ELMs on two fronts.

Firstly, they are cutting the overall farming budget. This cannot be ignored. As the old EU subsidy scheme was phased out, all of this money was meant to be transferred to ELMs - although the schemes and what they pay for might be different, the total funding for farmers would remain the same. But the Treasury is holding onto £100 million to pay for their spending splurge instead of redirecting this funding to ELMs as planned.

Secondly, within the shrinking farming budget, the ELMs portion of the budget is remaining virtually static, increasing only by 2.5% over the next three years.

Under Labour's mismanagement of the economy, inflation is continuing to creep up, now reaching 3.6% a year. That means the value of the budget for farmers is being chipped away, undermining the sector, undermining nature recovery, and undermining rural communities.

This cut will cause substantial pain for many farmers who are reliant on these payments. It adds insult to injury after the family farm tax. I don't see how Labour can expect to achieve their manifesto pledge to stop the decline of nature whilst undermining the farming budget, the largest single pot of funding for nature's recovery. After all, 67% of land in England is farmed - without farmers, we don't have a chance of restoring nature to our green and pleasant land.

Now more than ever, we should be working closely with our farmers to help them adopt new, sustainable ways to farm, protect their land and their businesses. Failure to do this will have long-lasting implications for rural communities, our environment, our food security, and the survival of English farming.

Labour ministers are hiding, hoping that no one will care to stand up for farmers and nature whilst they chip away at their budget.

The government needs to actually deliver on its manifesto pledges to support farmers, nature and rural communities. Otherwise, we will all have to live with the consequences.

Jerome Mayhew is the MP for Broadland and Fakenham