Ulster Unionist Deputy Leader and Agriculture Spokesperson Diana Armstrong MLA has challenged the Agriculture Minister over remarks in a Belfast Telegraph interview, in which he said around 7% of farmers produce some 70% of the phosphorus going onto land, before warning that if people continue to oppose him Northern Ireland has too big a herd.

Speaking in the Assembly, Diana Armstrong said:

“The Minister said 90% of farmers are doing the right thing. He said around 7% are producing something like 70% of the phosphorus. His words, not mine.

“Then, a few minutes later, he said that if people keep opposing him we have too big a herd in Northern Ireland. He named dairy.

“Well, which is it? If the problem is 7%, why is the warning pointed at everybody’s stock? Work with me or we cut your herd is not working in partnership with an industry, and it is not the 7% who will feel it.

“So let me ask the Minister’s party a straight question. Is degrowth now Alliance policy for agriculture? The Minister has ruled out a buyout scheme and I take him at his word on that. But you do not need a buyout scheme. You can do it slowly, through enough small decisions, until a family farm cannot see a way forward and the next generation does not take it on.

“Farmers want clean water. I have yet to meet one who does not. But they will not accept being pointed at as though this is their problem alone, and the Minister’s own figures show it is not.

“He is right that 90% are doing the right thing. So where is the support for those people? In 2025 this Department offered not one pound in farm capital investment. Not one. Being left alone by your Department is not the same thing as being backed by it.

“The Minister also said there are a lot of parallels between Northern Ireland and the Netherlands, and that the challenges are very, very, very similar. They are not, and his own Department’s statistics say so. There are 25,834 farms in Northern Ireland. Almost four fifths of them are classed as very small. Four out of five people working on our land are the farmer, a partner or a spouse. That is not Dutch agri-industry. That is family farming, and policy built on somebody else’s model will not fit the ground it lands on.

“Food production matters to this country. Taking acres out of production here does not mean the world eats less. It means somebody else grows it, somewhere with none of the standards we impose on our own farmers. There is no victory in clearing our conscience by importing beef off the back of a cleared rainforest.”