PM set to rethink rewilding policy as costs crisis mounts

THE COST-OF-LIVING crisis has forced a rethink on the Government’s controversial rewilding proposals, according to reports.

The Government is shifting the more than £2bn a year paid to farmers in England from a system largely based on the amount of land farmed to a new environmental land management scheme (Elms), with payments under the old scheme already being reduced.

A third of the total budget was destined for the landscape recovery scheme, which Defra described as “a more radical, large-scale” approach, with pilot projects alone expected to create “at least 20,000 hectares of wilder landscapes, habitats, rewetted peat and afforestation”.

However reports in the Sunday Times suggest the rewilding scheme has been cut from as much as £800m a year to just £50m over three years.

The shift in policy will be seen as a victory for the farming lobby, but also part of a wider scaling back by the Government over its net zero goals.

President of the National Farmers’ Union Minette Batters told LBC Radio yesterday it was a “big mistake” for Government to focus on rewilding the countryside at the expense of food production.

Ms Batters said: “The frustration to date has really been driven by a very strong focus on environmental delivery alone, so legislative pathways on trees, on nature, on taking land out of reduction, on species, alongside that you have a massive commitment on house building, on green energy, and the challenge on land use is going to be ever more difficult.

“What I would say, very strongly, is it cannot be about an either or, it isn’t food production or the environment, it is food production and the environment and for every farmer in this country there is no greater investment they can make than into their soils, that is good for the environment, good for their business and good for food production.”

The reports suggest the majority of the funding will now be channelled towards the sustainable farming incentive and farmlevel wildlife projects, in a move wildlife groups condemned as a “massive betrayal”.

It comes ahead of a new food strategy expected to be published today which has already been branded “half-baked” by campaigners unhappy over the apparent rejection of a proposal for tax on sugar and salt.

A leaked document said “individual responsibility and choice” is important when it comes to eating healthily, and industry “also has a role to play”.

But there was no promise of a new £3/kg tax on sugar and £6/ kg tax on salt sold for use in processed foods or in restaurants and catering businesses, as recommended by its author Henry Dimbleby.

Professor Graham MacGregor, chairman of Action on Sugar and Action on Salt, said the leak made it “abundantly clear” the Government was “in the pocket of the food industry” and had “no desire to bite the hand that feeds it”.

The challenge on land use is going to be ever more difficult. President of the National Farmers’ Union Minette Batters.