‘Uncertain’ days ahead after first Bill in 70 years
THE Agriculture Bill 2018 has recently been published by the government. This is the first new UK Agriculture Bill for 70 years. The last, in 1947, was born from the food shortages of two world wars.
As it stands, the Bill is set to phase out direct payments (Basic Payment Scheme – BPS) to farmers between 2021 and 2027. So just over two more years of ‘steady as we go.’
The current total budget of rural payments – combination of direct payments, environmental payments and some other rural grant schemes which amount to around £3.2bn per annum is guaranteed for the lifetime of the parliament.
At face value that sounds encouraging and, in theory, until May 2022 – but the Government could fall at any time.
The sum of £3.2bn sounds a lot but is less than 0.2% of total government expenditure and, to put it in perspective, the overseas aid budget is over £13bn; nothing wrong with that I hasten to add. The replacement for BPS will be an Environmental Land Management scheme or schemes which have yet to be developed hence the transition.
This will not be easy, having had the debacle of the latest environmental scheme called Countryside Stewardship.
Despite the first environmental schemes being developed in the late 1980s and the take-up by farmers of successive schemes had grown so that over 70% of the farmed area of England was in one kind of scheme, the introduction of Countryside Stewardship (CS) in 2015 has meant this area is plummeting as old schemes expire.
CS is not popular, bureaucratic to apply for, difficult to comply with and – coupled with often low payment rates – it is not attractive. There is much talk of landscape scale conservation but, without any environmental scheme being workable and attractive, it won’t be taken up by farmers and so will not be applied across the countryside.
As farmers seek to replace the lost income as BPS payments decline, it leaves only one route – greater productivity. We only have to look at New Zealand, where subsidies were removed in the 1980s to see what happens – farm amalgamations and greater intensification.
I don’t think anyone can argue with Michael Gove’s mantra of ‘Public Money for Public Good’ – but when food is not defined as a public good that is when farmers disagree.
British food has to be available for all that want it and at all price points. Not all consumers can shop at M&S or Waitrose – all are entitled to food produced to the best standards and not reliant on cheap, imported food produced to a lower specification.
The Agriculture Bill is just a framework that enables DEFRA to introduce the detail over time. As they say, the devil is in the detail.
We live in interesting, uncertain times.