Now Reading: UK announces £65m drought aid for farmers in England
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UK announces £65m drought aid for farmers in England
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced an additional £65 million package for farmers in England facing drought damage, the Times of India reports. The funding follows the driest July on record…
The Story in Brief
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced an additional £65 million package for farmers in England facing drought damage, the Times of India reports. The funding follows the driest July on record for England and Wales, when rainfall in England reached just 10% of the long-term average, according to the Met Office.
Of the package, £50 million will go to the Sustainable Farming Incentive, taking its total budget to £290 million. Another £15 million will support on-farm reservoirs. The government also plans to simplify water-use rules and speed up abstraction licences. The Country Land and Business Association welcomed the measures but said the reservoir funding would cover only a fraction of what farmers need.
The Indian Opinion
The easy story is that a large cheque has solved a climate and farming crisis. It has not. The government’s flexibility for struggling grassland may help immediately, but £15 million for reservoirs is plainly limited against the infrastructure required. Nor should every poor harvest be blamed on climate change alone without measuring crop losses and water levels. The useful test is whether reservoir construction and abstraction approvals actually accelerate before the next dry summer.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
This story was synthesised by AI from the source linked above.
