Is Brexit the path to sustainable farming?

However one feels about Brexit and its effects, one certainty is that farming and farmland, as we have known it during our EU membership, will change. The Agriculture Act 2020 was enacted in November and with it began a seven-year transition in which English farmers will adapt to a new financial support system to replace the Common Agricultural Polcy (CAP). 

The CAP has many criticisms and I doubt many wildlife conservationists will mourn its end. Under the scheme, farmers receive a Basic Payment subsidy based on the size of their farmed land. The intention is to guarantee minimum levels of production so that EU citizens have enough food to eat, and to ensure a fair standard of living for those dependent on the agriculture sector. The older EU states receive a larger payment per hectare than the others and France, Germany and Spain are considered to be the greatest beneficiaries of the scheme, which amounts to nearly €60 billion annually.

The policy has been accused of ignoring the rules of supply and demand, favouring larger farms and industry giants. It has promoted overproduction of food by member states, creating mountains of surplus food, which goes to waste or is transported to developing nations, thus undermining the livelihoods of local endemic farmers. It has also restricted development in poorer non-EU countries by imposing import tariffs on their agricultural products. It has also created bland farming landscapes as a result of of its broad-brush approach to farming strategies, with a narrow diversity of farming practises, grazing regimes and crop rotation. 

On 30th November Defra published a roadmap: Path to sustainable farming. This sets out the key aims of the seven-year transition. Instead of the flat-rate Basic Payment, farmers will be rewarded for engaging with farming practices that have environmental benefits. These will promote wildlife, reduce flooding, improve soil health, reduce soil erosion and include positive adaptations to climate change. This is summarised in a Government blog here. 

What might this mean for farming in the Greenhavens area? There is genuine hope that we will see more diversity in crop production and grazing regimes, better marginal environments around fields, the development of wildlife corridors, land being taken out of regular production, a reduction in the intensity of farming practices, creation of a greater mosaic of land uses, a reduction in the use of biocides, improvement in aquatic and semi-aquatic habitats, development of seasonal floodplains, more tree planting, greater public access onto enclosed land and a positive improvement in the visual amenity of farmland. The list is not exhaustive, but there is an opportunity to transform the current bland farmland aspect to one of a diversity of interconnecting habitats which will help British wildlife to recover from the damage it has suffered since the post-war intensification of farming.

There is, however, a recent cautionary tale from the Lake District that all landowners and regulating authorities should keep at the front of their minds, and that is the rush to indiscriminately plant trees in order to achieve targets, such as those set by carbon sequestration to reduce the impacts of climate change and the Forestry Commission's committment to plant 30k hectares of trees every year until 2025.

With a decline in public services since 2010, environmental regulators have fewer staff on the ground and there has consequently been an erosion in local knowledge, with a greater reliance on computer models and desk-top studies. The Forestry Commission (FC) is one such authority which inadvertently became a victim of this.

The FC is the responsible authority overseeing afforestation by private landowners. The owners of Berrier End Farm near Penrith in Cumbria, an area on the edge of the Lake District National Park, asked for permission to create a commercial conifer plantation. 

The FC required them to submit an Environmental Impact Assessment, a breeding bird survey and archaeological assessment before granting permission. A GIS mapping system was used to identify any priority habitats on the land proposed for afforestation, but because Berrier End Farm has no formal designation or protection for wildlife, and because no field surveys were carried out, its rich wildlife habitats with peat bog and transitional mires with a wealth of rare plant communities was not identified. 

Once permission was granted, responsibility was passed from FC to the Countryside Stewardship and the Rural Payments Agency for grant payments. It wasn't until areas of deep peat were ploughed, destroying important wildlife areas, that a local botanist raised the alarm with FC. But by then it was too late.

The FC genuinely cares about wildlife and it has been embarrassed by this episode in large part because it is struggling to fulfil its priorities as a result of Governmental resource cuts. 

A vibrant community of wildlife enthusiasts will need to engage with the new farming regime if similar unintended consequences are to be avoided - and this applies to the Greenhavens area as much as anywhere else. Let us hope then that the new Agriculture Act 2020 helps to improve all apsects of our farmed landscapes without harming wildlife and habitats and that 2021 will be the beginning of positive change.

All photographs by Steven Teale.