CEREDIGION MP Ben Lake has warned the Government that ‘prime agricultural land’ is being sold to corporations with the intent of ‘greenwashing’ their own emissions rather than a genuine intention to lower their carbon footprint.

During a debate on National Food Strategy and food security, Mr Lake highlighted that the Green Finance Observatory had expressed concerns about such schemes.

He warned that they were ‘fundamentally not about mitigating climate change, or even about removing past emissions, but about enabling future emissions, about protecting economic growth and corporate profits’.

Mr Lake also argued that in the context of climate change there was a more urgent need to become more self-sufficient in the production of fruit and vegetables.

“We need proper land use planning and consideration across the four nations of the United Kingdom,” he said.

“I'm very concerned that when it comes to certain carbon offsetting schemes, prime agricultural land is being sold to corporations with intent of greenwashing their own emissions rather than actually contributing to the nationwide effort of reducing our carbon footprint.

“The Green Finance Observatory say that ‘the elephant in the room’ is that offsets are fundamentally not about mitigating climate change, or even about removing past emissions, but about enabling future emissions, about protecting economic growth and corporate profits.

“Too often in Ceredigion, we have far too many farms that were prime agricultural productive land that have now being bought by these corporations not to reduce their own emissions but to greenwash them, to allow them to continue business as usual but in the process reduce our own productive capacity."

In his Commons speech, Mr Lake also called for greater self-sufficiency in the context of climate change: “When we look to the future of our food security, climate change poses a real significant risk,” he said.

“We're only self-sufficient to the tune of 16 per cent of the fruit that we consume and DEFRA’s food securities report noted that there are real concerns about water availability in many of the countries on which the UK currently depends.

“When we discuss food security, we really need to think about growing more of our own.”