Howard’s way

Farmers and food production are at the centre of the Government’s new Agriculture Bill, right? Think again – they seem to be the last thing on people’s minds, says Philip Howard

I HAVE been wailing on and off like a Cassandra for the past three or so years about the future of British agriculture. However, now the umbilical cord with Europe has been cut. No more Common Agricultural Policy to which farmers may cling.

But where are we going? The 2020 Agriculture Bill is moving through Parliament as we speak.

“This bill is one of the most significant pieces of legislation for farmers in England for over 70 years and it is absolutely vital that it is tailored to farming’s specific needs and ambitions,” declared Minette Batters, president of the National Farmers’ Union.

I have got news for you Minette, it won’t be tailored to the specific needs or ambitions of farmers. The writing is all over the wall. With apologies to Bill Clinton and his 1992 election slogan, “It’s the environment, stupid.” The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) says the bill offers “a radical rethink of farming practice and most importantly recognises the need to regenerate the soil… but conflicts are sure to arise.”

The centrepiece for delivering our new green and prosperous land is a new subsidy regime based upon the receipt of public money for the delivery of public good.

Quite what those worthy words ‘public good’ mean is not really defined. Other than it is not food. Which is strange. I would have thought farming involved food production – animals, crops and vegetables – and that is surely a public good. Maybe I am confusing public good with public interest. But if we are also talking about sustainability and self-sufficiency then I would expect food production, where it comes from and how it is produced, to be part of the public good.

In 1984, the UK was 78% self-sufficient in its own food production. In 2018, that figure had dropped to 61%. Is that economically, environmentally or morally right?

Incidentally, there is a fascinating book of the same name, Green and Prosperous Land – A blueprint for rescuing the British countryside by Dieter Helm, an Oxford professor specialising in economic policy and the environment. He focuses on building a greener economy by restoring rivers, greening agriculture, restoring the uplands, cleaning up the coast and reintegrating nature into our towns and cities. At the end of every chapter he finishes with, “What is not to like about this?”

Well, frankly, Dieter, there is quite a lot not to like. While I cannot fault the basic underlying tenet that runs though the book – that there is a climate-change crisis and we have been destroying our environment – many of his solutions are pretty draconian. Too many sticks and few carrots.

Little escapes Helm’s knobkerrie. Sheep, deer, farmers, landowners, grouse shooting, pheasant shooting, salmon farmers, capitalists, SUV drivers, the Chinese, the Donald and the EU all kop it. Even migrants.

However, Helm reserves his greatest wrath for polluters. We are all polluters, especially farmers, and the polluter must pay. He castigates the perverse subsidy and tax regimes that have propped up European and British agriculture for the past 47 years. And I can’t disagree. But he does offer solutions: public-good payments, the principle of the polluter paying for damage caused, protecting natural capital via a nature fund – somewhat akin to a sovereign wealth fund – and trying to create an overarching body that can coordinate delivery.

It is the last point that concerns me most. I was chairing a meeting recently that consisted of farmers, foresters, the Forestry Commission, Natural England, the Environment Agency, the RSPB and the NFU.

We all wanted to see more trees planted, better air quality, cleaner rivers and seas, and fertile soils. But everybody remained stuck resolutely in their silos of self-interest. The RSPB man approved of tree planting but not near the uplands or indeed pretty much any field north of Preston so that curlew habitat could be protected. In that case, said the forestry man, why were we worried about curlew if they were so prolific. The Natural England man spoke for an hour about the new environmental management scheme before he even mentioned farming and livestock.

We are about to restructure the entire British landscape. The train has left the station. Quite a lot of the passengers are not on board and of those who are, I suspect only a handful know where we might be going.

We need some honesty and transparency about where we want our food to come from and its cost. And we need some real coordinated leadership from our Government. Are we going to have our food produced, to coin Neville Chamberlain, in some far, far away country by people of whom we know nothing?

There is a type of ‘I’m all right Jack, pull up the ladder’ view of the environment that is at best hypocritical and at worst dishonest. We need to think macro but act micro. If we work with our farmers and give them time and money to adapt, we can, literally, have our green and prosperous land ‘cake’ and eat it. If not, we will needlessly destroy farming and its communities in the same way that Margaret Thatcher crushed the miners. And all we will have to eat is curlew.

The centrepiece of the bill is a new subsidy for the delivery of ‘public good’ that, strangely, does not involve the production of food