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THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW Highlighting best practice 4 | REVIEW OF THE YEAR At the heart of the row over the use of neonicotinoid pesticides and the plight of pollinators was the issue of food security. With an ever-increasing number of mouths to feed, scientific and policy experts, on both the global and national scale, have been seized by the issue of food and nutrition security – ensuring people have enough of the right food to eat to allow them to go about their daily lives. As most of the world's commercial food crops depend on pollination by of the UK national herd. However, the £420 million generated each year by the sector made up one-third of Wales' agricultural production. During the summer recess in 2014, tensions between Russia and the EU over the situation in Ukraine saw Russia impose a ban on food imports from the EU. While this did not directly affect the UK dairy sector as whole, because the export market to Russia was relatively small, it was likely to have an indirect affect. Russia represents a sizeable market for a number of European nations' dairy producers, and its food import ban meant there was a surplus of European products on the global market. The resulting strong competition for business contributed to the downward pressure on milk prices. Analysts suspect that, globally, an upturn in production was behind the downward movement of the price of the commodity. This volatility in the global market can have a devastating impact on an individual farmer. For example, the average size of a UK dairy herd is 120 cows, and each cow produces 7500 litres of milk a year. A fall in the farm-gate price of 5 p per litre results in a £45,000 fall in turnover for the average dairy farmer. When this is set against a background of rising costs of production, such as increased cattle-feed prices, it makes it difficult for farmers to plan ahead or secure loans. The consequence of dairy farmers being financially constrained, limiting opportunities to modernise or diversify, paints a bleak picture for the long-term health of the UK dairy farming industry in a global market. With the lifting of the milk quota scheme in 2015, could we see the birth of so-called 'super farms' in the UK diary sector? Neonicotinoids and pollinators The sharp decline in pollinator populations is sounding alarm bells for food production The volatility in the global milk market and rising costs of production make it difficult for farmers to plan ahead or secure loans