Farmers have had a terrible time recently – the wettest spring on record has come on the back of several years of rising input prices. There is good news however, the shift in financial support through the new Environmental Land Management schemes should be positive for farmers and wider society as funding will be based on how you farm rather than how much land you own. The aim is to address the worsening state of our environment, including making inroads into greenhouse gas emissions from farming which, as other sectors make cuts, are growing as a proportion of UK emissions.
The wider challenges farming has faced recently demonstrate that farming needs to change if it is to have a sustainable future: resilient to a changing climate and market shocks, able to produce food in the long term while also delivering other societal needs including a healthy environment. History during and since World War Two shows it’s capable of doing so with the right signals, support and incentives.
They can now make a similar shift to combining environmental and economic sustainability by embracing change and planning proactively – and the right signals and support from government can help them to do this. Without this there is a risk that at best farmers continue with business as usual, failing to adapt and take advantage of schemes designed to help them do so.
To avoid this there needs to be a joined up, comprehensive package of support to help farmers transition to an environmentally and economically sustainable model. This should start with a clear vision and plan to deliver it, setting out what the new government want from farming, how the sector can get there and the role government will play in helping.
Some of the building blocks are already in place – there’s the new Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS), which with some tweaks could really support changes. But in some areas, such as trade, the previous government’s actions actually undermined its own agricultural policy. There are significant gaps too: a clear vision, full plans to help the sector decarbonise and meet the 2030 nature targets.
Creating a comprehensive policy package with a clear end goal for an economic sector needs a bold vision and joined up thinking. There are lots of existing pieces of work to draw on – not least Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy which took a comprehensive look at the food system and contains recommendations that would support farming. We know that Defra have done work on a national land use framework. CPRE are working with them to ensure the new government’s commitment to publishing a framework results in a tool that joins up decision making across all land uses (housing, energy, access, farming) and uses the evidence about land capability to give farmers a clearer context in which to work.
To further help the government, over the next year CPRE is going to produce a series of short briefings looking at specific issues which are vital to the countryside and to farming but which are currently not getting the attention they need. These include how the gap between national objectives and what happens on the ground can be bridged through local and regional support. This would help farmers know what they can deliver on their farm, what fits within their local landscape, and where they can get funding and other support to do it. This will draw on some of Defra’s Tests and Trials. Other overlooked topics we plan to examine include how the government can support the protection and improvement of soils – vital for nature, climate and food production - including the role of land classification in protecting our most productive soils; and a closer look at upland farming – an important part of many of our most precious landscapes - and the support this struggling sector needs to move to an environmentally and economically sustainable model.
By shining a light on some overlooked issues and drawing on CPRE’s expertise we hope to help government think comprehensively about its role in supporting the sector through this transition. Separately, later in the year we’ll also be demonstrating the importance of peri-urban farming with case studies of farming models in the Green Belt and beyond which connect people with nature and produce sustainable food.
There is a case for optimism – there are many brilliant examples of farmers who are delivering for the environment and society while increasing their financial viability, but we need to use all the levers in a coordinated way to support the farming sector. We may not be able to stop a repeat of this wet spring or global economic shocks, but the government can help the sector to be in better shape to withstand them. Doing so will not only reap rewards for our countryside, our planet and our wellbeing but also ensure farmers can keep producing food long into the future.
Graeme Willis is Agricultural Lead at CPRE, The Countryside Charity. Follow @CPRE
The opinions expressed in this blog are the authors' and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.
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