Stuart Agnew
Quick Facts
Biography
John Stuart Agnew (born 30 August 1949) is a Member of the European Parliament for the East of England region for the UK Independence Party. He was elected in 2009.
Agnew was born in Norwich. He was educated at Gordonstoun School and the Royal Agricultural College. He is a Norfolk farmer who formerly represented Norfolk on the NFU Council. He is a long term UKIP member. In the European Parliament he sits on the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.
He ran for UKIP in the 2001 General Election in Mid Norfolk and in the 2005 General Election in Norfolk North, and stood in Broadland in the 2010 and 2015 UK General Elections.
Agnew describes climate change science as "the global warming scam". In March 2015 he spoke in the European Parliament, saying that plants need carbon dioxide as food, so "if you succeed in decarbonising Europe, our crops will have no natural gas to grow from". Richard A. Betts of the UK Met Office described this as a misunderstanding, since cutting emissions did not mean reducing existing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In March 2016 Fincham Farm, owned and run by Agnew, was featured in a video investigation by Hillside Animal Sanctuary. It showed supposedly free range chickens living in squalid conditions, infested with mites, and with high levels of ammonia.