Agriculture Act 2020

The Agriculture Act was added to the statutory books in December 2020.

Sustain championed public goods, agroecology, fair dealing, and trade standards as duties of Government.

We want to say thank you to our members, supporters, and funders who helped us and others get some key wins.

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You can download our briefings during the Bill process:

• Agriculture Bill 2019-2021 briefing.
• House of Commons MP priority amendments briefing.
• House of Lords Report Stage briefing.
• House of Lords Committee Stage briefing.
• House of Lords Second Reading briefing.
• Sustain's oral and written evidence to the Efra Committee.

Sustain focused attention on supporting amendments to the Agriculture Bill on five key themes:

• Public health - support for farming methods that promote public health, such as low antibiotic and pesticide use, and promotion of healthy fruit and vegetable production. Read our public health amendment briefing and recent blog.
• Agroecology - support for whole-farm systems, such as organic, that can deliver on multiple environmental, social and animal welfare benefits. Read our agroecology amendment briefing and blog.
• Fair dealing - support for powers, duties and regulation to ensure fair trading practices throughout the food supply chain, to protect decent livelihoods. Read our fair dealing amendment briefing.
• Agricultural workers - support for reinstatement of an Agricultural Wages Board for England, to ensure better pay and conditions for farm workers. Read our 2 page briefing on the amendment we want and longer agricultural workers briefing.
• International trade - support for an amendment to ensure that imports of agri-food products must meet the same high standards expected of British farmers, to prevent unfair competition. We are joining with others to call for this and a budget amendment. Read a short joint briefing on these issues.

We also supported a number of amendments from our members and the Greener UK coalition. These are listed in the Report Stage Briefing.

Produced with the support of the Friends Provident Foundation.