This week David discusses climate change and farming

The impact of climate change will be a regular theme in my weekly columns.

I recently visited Belgrade in Serbia on a parliamentary visit, one of the issues we explored was the effect of changing weather patterns on the country’s climate and how that influenced its agricultural output.

Serbia remains one of the world’s leading exporters of apples, plums and raspberries, and has a burgeoning wine industry. Warming temperatures has been very good for these products.

At the same time Serbia was traditionally part of the Soviet Union’s grain belt along with other republics such as Kazakhstan. This year because of the lack of rain it has been an very poor harvest with fields of wheat and corn lying ruined for all to see. Effective water management has therefore become a key feature of Serbian farming, but from this year’s events it is a quest it is failing to achieve. If this was a one-off event then the losses would be bearable. Sadly this year was far from an aberration and poor harvests for grain are becoming the norm.

If this pattern is repeated worldwide – and with the problems in the US with so many tropical storms hitting, that country I expect it to be so – we will see the price of bread and cereals rise substantially.

Part of my brief on the Opposition Front Bench is to help design a new farming system that accommodates and hopefully forestalls the impact of climate change.

Thankfully Stroud District is already playing its part with its moderation of the flooding problem by upstream intervention allowing marginal landscapes to hold water, alongside clearance of watercourses and effective incorporation of woodland.

To this we are indebted to Chris Uttley, Sarah Lennon and Tim Davies amongst others who have pioneered this work.

Thankfully notice of what they have accomplished is now spreading out so that other areas can replicate how to introduce this form of flood and climate alleviation.

There is of course much more we have to do locally if we are to bear down on the repercussions of rising temperatures.

However this can never be an alternative to appropriate action at national and international level. That’s why Trump’s announcement that he will disavow the US’s commitment to the Paris Accord on climate change is a stupid, if not a criminal abdication of responsibility.

Climate change must be central to all policy-making from now on and I’ll try my best to make sure that the UK plays her part.