‘Rewilding isn’t the answer. People can’t eat trees’
Why import food from the other side of the world when it can be produced, responsibly, in Britain?
THE countess whose estate is the setting for Downton Abbey has criticised rewilding policies, saying people “cannot eat trees”.
The 8th Countess of Carnarvon, of Highclere Castle near Newbury in Berkshire, writes in today’s Daily Telegraph that while rewilding schemes are useful, Britain’s focus should be on growing more food and becoming less reliant on imports.
She writes: “Rewilding is part of the countryside story but we cannot eat the trees that politicians propose we plant. We should grow at least some of our own food and for that farmers need support. As farming support dies away, it has been estimated that the UK could lose 75 per cent of its wheat production over the next five years. Will we import from Ukraine or the US?”
The Government has set what it describes as “ambitious” targets to plant 30,000 acres of woodland by March 2025 to help tackle climate change.
Among several schemes to encourage tree planting is the England Woodland Creation Offer, where landowners could receive up to £10,200 per hectare and a further £8,000 if their actions further benefit the public. Labour has previously pledged to plant two billion trees by 2040, and two years ago Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, pledged to increase the amount of woodland as part of a £28 billion green investment package. However, the money set aside for the pledge has since been reduced.
Lady Carnarvon, who alongside her husband Geordie have run the family home since 2001, says that the UK could reduce its carbon impact by becoming more self-sufficient rather than through rewilding. She adds: “Everyone needs to be able to earn a living from producing food and producing it with care for today and the future. Surely we should at least be partially self-sufficient. We cannot offload our environmental impact by importing food.”
Among those to express caution over rewilding is the Princess Royal, who said in an interview with The Telegraph last month that if it was done at scale you could rewild the “wrong things”.
Lady Carnarvon adds that while “sheep, cows, goats, pigs and chickens are all blamed [over] climate change” there were bigger factors harming the environment. “Farmers look after their animals well, nurture the land, sell locally and share their traditions,” she writes. “Farms are just as important as factories and are infinitely better for both the environment and for the land.”
A Defra spokesman said: “Our farming reforms are designed to support a productive food sector, alongside delivering environmental improvements. We produce 60 per cent of all the food we need.”
Sheep, cows, goats, pigs and chickens are all variously blamed for their contribution towards climate change. Those who are against eating meat are vocal in their insistence on this issue, but the data does not necessarily support their argument.
Until around 100 years ago, the human population had remained reasonably steady, but since then it has exploded: from over a billion to more than eight billion in a century. To survive and move forward, we use every resource we can find from our planet to make our lives easier and more comfortable. Everything is for us: we keep changing, restlessly improving things, rarely contemplating what we already have.
While we acknowledge that we cannot yet map our own brains with all their infinite connections and imaginative possibilities, we are less good at admitting that neither can we map, let alone replace, the infinite intricacies of the natural world on which we are so dependent. We try: some of us study fungi; others observe the patterns of butterfly migration; some research the importance of coral reefs; others are experts in ancient oak pastures. The diversity and beauty of our planet is unparalleled.
The Earth and its climate has undoubtedly changed over time, but it has become impossible not to admit that we are forcing the pace of that change. At this rate, neither those with whom we share our world nor we ourselves will be able to continue as we are. Some may not survive.
Hollywood and those who seek new pastures talk about moving off the planet once we have laid waste to this one. Once again, however, that is a scenario that puts us first rather than thinking about the world we would leave behind. Nor is it likely in the near future.
The question is how we restore balance to the natural world – and in few areas is the debate as fierce as over what we eat. Food production is not only necessary for our survival, it is a central part of most human cultures. Eating together has been the essential heart of human life for millennia: of politics, of mating habits and of entertainment. Think how many scenes in Downton Abbey were set around the dining room table, exciting much interest about both the etiquette of dining and the menus.
Ingredients, however, do not just magic themselves onto the shiny metal and glass shelves of supermarkets. The flour and eggs for baking, beef for a stew, lamb for a shepherd’s pie, apples for a lunchtime snack, plums for jam and so on all come from our farms.
As visitors arrive at Highclere, where food – afternoon tea, for example – is often part of their tour, they drive through a landscape dotted with sheep. They cannot see the little herd of pigs, but just over the horizon and all around are fields of wheat, barley and oats. In the spring, there might be rape, beans to put nitrogen back into the soil, and borders of maize, as well as wild flowers, wandering hedges and peaceful woodland.
It is all interrelated and the land benefits from the diversity. The number of wild bird species is increasing, deer and hedgehogs are free to roam, and most visitors see at least some of the wildlife with which we share this space during their visit. It is all about balance and long rotation. There is shade and space, shelter in the winter, and useful fence posts for a long slow scratch by the pigs: a farmer’s care for the land.
As farmers, Geordie and I try to balance stewardship with profitability. Everyone needs to be able to earn a living and all countries should at least be partially self-supporting. The service industries and manufacturing are only part of the equation. It not only adds to the environmental impact to import food from the other side of the world. It is not sensible to be almost solely reliant on imports to feed your population.
Rewilding is part of the countryside story but we cannot eat the trees that politicians propose we plant. We should grow at least some of our own food and for that farmers need support. As farming support dies away, it has been estimated that the UK could lose 75 per cent of its wheat production over the next five years. Will we import from Ukraine or the US? The wheat would have to travel miles and it would give us no food resilience.
In the UK, farmers look after their animals well, nurture the land, sell locally and share their traditions. Farms are just as important as factories and are infinitely better for both the environment and for the land. The clearing of the skies, rivers and streams, the drop in pollution levels and increase in wildlife that occurred when so much human activity ceased during Covid surely proved that farm animals, who continued to go about their business, were the least of the environment’s problems.
Ingredients don’t just magic themselves onto the shiny metal and glass shelves of supermarkets