December 2017
The National Trust, RSPB and The Wildlife Trusts have worked in partnership with thousands of farmers for the last few decades, managing land in a way that works for nature, and enables farmers to build an agricultural sector that’s fit for the future. With farmers, Government, academics and others, we’ve all worked together to better understand the environmental challenge we face, and to develop practical solutions to address these.
To support that work, we’ve looked at the financial scale of the challenge facing our farmed environment post-Brexit. Our new report reveals that to simply meet existing goals the Government has signed up to, spending on environmental land management schemes needs to be five times higher than it is now.
As Brexit fast approaches, we’re now at a critical moment where the UK Government will decide how to redeploy the £3bn currently spent through the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) each year. Michael Gove has indicated a significant change in farming policy, putting environmental outcomes at the heart of a replacement for the CAP. Indeed, Theresa May’s Chief of Staff, Gavin Barwell, has placed the environment centre stage, as one of the three pillars guiding the Conservative Party. But, while we might end up with a good policy, there’s no guarantee that there will be any meaningful money to deliver the necessary changes in land management to restore our troubled natural environment.
In fact, the working assumption from many is that there might just be a few million pounds left over for the environment after subsidies make way for markets, or that market-based payments for ecosystems services pilots can be quickly scaled up to take over Government support.
Yet, our research shows that the UK needs to significantly increase what it currently spends on agri-environment schemes, just to deliver today’s goals, let alone the UK’s bigger, welcome, and more ambitious goals. Given other legitimate objectives from a post-CAP system, the overall amount of spending needs to be at least £3bn, if not more.
Farmers need funding to deliver benefits that the market doesn’t, like looking after soils, cleaning water and providing habitats for pollinators and other wildlife. This isn’t about farmers versus conservationists, but about how to ensure government funding can support a long-term sustainable future for farming, whilst also delivering the ambition that the Government and all of us share: to leave our environment in a better state than we found it.
Farmers increasingly recognise that public funding should be linked to delivering wider public benefits and not based on the size of land holdings. We’re working with our farm tenants to look at how we can support them over the coming years to produce high quality food while continuing to act as expert custodians for our beautiful countryside.
We know our wildlife is in trouble, and the natural resources vital to our future growth are diminishing every year. For the prosperity and security of our economy and our farming communities, our food production and our nature, significant investment is needed to reverse this drastic decline.
Richard Hebditch, Government Affairs Director, National Trust
Marcus Gilleard, Senior Policy Programmes Manager, National Trust
Find National Trust's policy team on twitter: @NTExtAffairs
Read the briefing
Read the full report
Aspects of this blog were originally published on another website.
The opinions expressed in this blog are the author’s and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.
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