Landscape conservation and nature conservation: uneasy bedfellows?

Two perspectives – one from Europe and the other from Dartmoor.
On the face, of it you would think that all those who want to protect the environment get along with each other working towards a common goal. This can happen especially if the nature conservation of species is dependent on traditional farming practices in culturally developed and ancient landscapes, but when conservation relies on process driven rewilding there are huge consequences for landscapes and the traditional cultures that sustain them.

I recently came across a couple of essays, an editorial and opinion piece about this very topic from a mainland southern European perspective. You can download the four pieces here. I was struck how the perspective essay by Mauro Agnoletti ‘Rural landscape, nature conservation and culture: some notes on research trends and management approaches from a (southern) European perspective’ shared many of the same concerns as those held by Tom Greeves who has written on the subject from a Dartmoor perspective. You can download Tom Greeves’ paper ‘Dartmoor and the displacement of culture: analysis and remedy’ here.

This blog reviews the assertions of Agnoletti and Greeves and discusses the future for landscapes and local cultures in the face of the globally driven economic, social and environmental pressures and changes.

Rural landscape, nature conservation and culture: some notes on research trends and management approaches from a (southern) European perspective
Agnoletti says that landscapes are largely a cultural construct i.e. they have been created over time by the people who have inhabited and farmed the land. A cultural landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a cultural group: culture is the agent, the natural area the medium and the cultural landscape is the result.

He argues that whilst the importance of landscapes is acknowledged at an international and European scale the policies required to conserve them are largely lacking. He suggests that if a landscape scale approach was adopted across Europe a new paradigm for a development model could harmoniously integrate social, economic and environmental factors in time and space.

But as the globalisation of agriculture has occurred during the 20^th century traditional farming practices have collapsed leading to cultivatable land being industrially intensified whilst the pastoral landscapes which are on poorer land, and therefore unimprovable from an agricultural perspective, are being abandoned.

These trends are therefore leading to a cultural globalisation (i.e. homogenisation). The idea of nature has been overlapped with landscape and this is leading to re-naturalisation (what in the UK we would call rewilding) and increasing forest cover which overlays the ancient landscapes patterns along with their associated long and rich cultural history that led to their creation.

Agnoletti argues that there is a growing tendency to see a scientific approach to the study of landscape as a natural resource opposed to a cultural phenomenon. The workstreams that flow from this are ecological in nature with little cultural focus. Academic journals see landscape as an ecological issue largely in the context of nature conservation and he suggests that scientific publications have a higher academic credibility than chapters and books in the Humanities which therefore establishes an ecological bias.

Agnoletti states that such an approach causes three problems:

a) Degradation of the rural landscape
Farming per se is considered damaging to nature: 20^th and 21^st century approaches to traditional pastoral farming methods are lumped in together with modern intensive agricultural methods. Pastoral landscapes do not receive the financial support they require to remain sustainable and are abandoned either to be re-naturalised or afforested. Cultivated land is intensified agriculturally – both phenomena lead to a loss of local knowledge, cultural landscapes and the rural population.

b) Abandonment and reforestation
The abandonment of European landscapes has also been encouraged by European Union set-aside policies. As a result of this and globalization it is estimated that 400-500k ha of forest advance occurs per annum – partly through abandonment and partly through active re-afforestation.

The dominant narrative of European ecologists is that the environment needs to be returned to the natural state, partly because Man has destroyed nature and partly because the EU Habitats Directive has an emphasis on natural habitats.

How can it be logical to want to return to the natural state in landscapes that haven’t been natural for 8000 years? Nevertheless, re-naturalisation has been aligned in Europe with nature policies and the promotion of rewilding and afforestation in the fight against climate change through increased carbon sequestration.

c) Rural landscapes, history and biodiversity
Whilst the re-naturalisation of closed forest landscapes provides new habitats for some wildlife this is at the expense of the wildlife which already lives in the historical and largely open landscapes. A greater diversity of wildlife will be conserved if many cultural landscapes are protected.

Agnoletti summarises his argument as follows:-

• Landscapes need to be viewed for they are i.e. their cultural origins
• Europe needs an adequate characterization of rural landscapes
• Support for traditional agriculture is required to halt further losses
• Nature narratives need to be combined with cultural ones to create biocultural diversity
• Natural habitats need to be prevented in unnatural places
• Achieving these things will help maintain rural communities

This is an interesting and informative perspective from Southern Europe however it contrasts markedly with the situation found in the UK for the following reasons:-

1. The UK values its Cultural Landscapes and has categorized them in great detail under the Natural Area Profile assessment (see here).
2. The abandonment of land seen on marginal land in Europe simply hasn’t happened on anything other than a minor scale in the UK
3. Marginal land particularly those in protected areas have received considerable sums of subsidy through the agri-envionment schemes to ensure that traditional management practices are encouraged and continued so that the landscapes, the cultural groups that produced them and the biodiversity are protected.

On the face of it then, it would appear that in the UK, the conservation of landscapes and local farmers was working in harmony with the objectives of nature conservation. However, this is not the case in the uplands of Britain where their special landscapes are deeply contested today by various groups of interested parties. Tom Greeves, argues very strongly that culture and landscape on Dartmoor have been detrimentally out manoeuvred by advocates of the natural environment.

Dartmoor and the displacement of culture: analysis and remedy – conservation imbalance
Greeves points out that the post-war conservation movement has been dominated by the natural environment and is heavily skewed towards nature. He argues that nature and culture should be given equal balance. He says that even the name Natural England reinforces the belief that the environment is natural. The 25k ha of Sites of Special Scientific Interest on Dartmoor are all about animals and plants and no mention is made about culture.

In 2006 when the Dartmoor Vision was published, areas called ‘Premier Archaeological Landscapes’ were introduced – these were areas where the historic landscape would be given primacy over wildlife. Greeves dismisses this concession as he argues that no part of the moor is without cultural value. He goes on to argue that the era of ‘overgrazing’ (i.e. circa 1950-1980) was actually revolutionary for the historic environment as it revealed many archaeological features and sites which had become lost in the vegetation. Once the agri-environment schemes were introduced and the numbers of grazing animals were reduced gorse and unpalatable grasses took over in many areas and hid and in some cases damaged the cultural landscape. Greeves argues that Natural England have ‘clung on to the concept of overgrazing’ and as a result ‘awareness of the cultural riches of Dartmoor has not yet impinged on Establishment thinking.

Policies of Natural England and the destruction of neighbourliness
Not only does Greeves loathe the agri-environment schemes for their stocking reductions he also blames them for creating divisiveness amongst the hill-farming Commoners. The subsidy money was handed over to the local Common Associations who then had to decide how to allocate sums to individuals, this practice lead to arguments and squabbles where none had existed before. Without doubt Natural England’s policies in the latter parts of the last century and earlier parts of this one created great resentment as Commoners considered they were ‘fighting for their rights’ against the Natural England ‘dictatorship’.

The Mires Project
The Dartmoor Mires restoration project, a £1.1 million scheme which ran between 2010 and 2015 also comes in more considerable criticism from Greeves. He states that no evidence was ever presented to suggest that the moor was in fact actually damaged and therefore needed restoration. He was particularly incensed that large tracked machines were taken into the ‘wildest parts of the moor’ to carry out various works to impound water and rewet the peat. He calls it ‘one of the least prepared and worst pseudo-scientific projects’ that Dartmoor has ever seen.

Rewilding
With regards to calls to rewild Dartmoor as a result of ‘sheepwrecking’ he dismisses these ideas as they take no account of ‘the significance of the cultural landscape of Dartmoor and what it means in terms of the human story over the last eight millennia or so’.

Remedy
Greeves suggests that radical reform is needed underpinned by research. The stranglehold of Natural England must be challenged and removed as they have no right to upset the age old social fabric of hill-farming and they have no right to obscure the archaeology of the moor. With regard to how the moor should be managed he urges that Commoners be asked for their views and then allowed to enact them. He urges that culture, flora and fauna are respected in equal measure and that the existing designations such as SSSIs and Scheduled Ancients Monuments are replaced with a new overarching protective mechanism and that Dartmoor is viewed in the future as an ecocultural zone. Finally he recommends that the National Park Authority is replaced by a Dartmoor Assembly which consists of elected local people.

There is much passion throughout much of Tom Greeves paper and it is fair to say that it has not been well received in a number of places! But rather like the Agnoletti paper it does raise a number of important points. Amongst the displeasure of the status quo raised in both papers there is a plea that cultural landscapes are given equal consideration to biological landscapes.

This of course sounds entirely reasonable but in practice achieving this has historically proven to be extremely difficult. A heavily grazing and swaled Dartmoor landscape (the over grazing over burning narrative) is good for the cultural landscape but bad for the biological one and of course was the exact scenario that led to the introduction of the agri-environment schemes.

Conversely a less grazed and less burnt Dartmoor landscape, even one which contains Premier Archaeological Landscapes, currently pleases no one completely as the effects of climate change and atmospheric pollution are reconfiguring the moors in ways that satisfy very few. However, the search for a better consensus must continue in the brave new world of Brexit and the ‘public money for public goods debate’, for most agree (with the exception of the rewilders) that a world without hill-farmers will create a new Dartmoor landscape that the majority don’t want.

Farming Tomorrow?

On the 1st August this week a think tank, Policy Exchange, published a report entitled Farming Tomorrow: British agriculture after Brexit.  You can download the report from here.

Policy Exchange describe themselves as follows:-

‘Policy Exchange is the UK’s leading think tank. We are an educational charity whose mission is to develop and promote new policy ideas that will deliver better public services, a stronger society and a more dynamic economy. Registered charity no: 1096300.

Policy Exchange is committed to an evidence-based approach to policy development. We work in partnership with academics and other experts and commission major studies involving thorough empirical research of alternative policy outcomes. We believe that the policy experience of other countries offers important lessons for government in the UK. We also believe that government has much to learn from business and the voluntary sector.’

According to Wikipedia Policy Exchange is a British centre-right think tank, created in 2002 and based in London. It has been variously described as, “the largest, but also the most influential think tank on the right”, in the Daily Telegraph, and as, “a neo liberal lobby group funded by dark money”, in The Guardian.

Interestingly Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for the Environment was instrumental in setting up Policy Exchange in 2002 and was its first chairman. Even more interestingly Michael Gove’s recent speech on environmental policy ‘The Unfrozen Moment – delivering a green Brexit’ (download here) practically mirrors the ethos of the Environment section of the Policy Exchange document.

Gove has been more circumspect about exactly what Brexit might mean for agriculture other than saying that in the future ‘support can only be argued for against other competing public goods if the environmental benefits of that spending are clear’.

Perhaps the Policy Exchange document gives us an insight into what Farming and Food Green paper might contain?

The document contains 6  chapters and an Executive summary. In the Introduction the authors argue against a British Food Policy based on Food Security and self-sufficiency, arguing that World free trade will provide us with our needs and suggesting that a policy of self-sufficiency would lead to even greater environmental damage.

Such views are not uncontested. Jay Rayner in his 2013 book ‘A greedy man in a hungry world’ argues that with the rise of the middles classes in China, India and Indonesia many of the markets that would have traditionally supplied British supermarkets are turning their attention to these new emerging markets which will make it potentially more difficult for Britain to source its food at low prices.

Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University London tweeted the following yesterday which highlights his concerns of the proposed strategy.

The Policy Exchange position certainly seems to support the views of the previous Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom when she spoke to the NFU in February this year (see here).

There is a full chapter in the report on agriculture in Britain from the ‘Corns Laws to the CAP’, of course repealing the Corns Laws in 1846 opened up tariff free trade and British agriculture acted as a free market with little government intervention, subsidy or protection. It would appear that we are heading back at least metaphorically to 1846 but on this occasion without an Empire or a navy that ruled the waves.

The final four chapters cover consumers, producers, the rural economy and the environment.

Consumers
Policy Exchange state that the most important stakeholder in food and farming is the consumer and that they want inexpensive, high quality, safe food which is available in the right quantity at the most convenient time and place.

This chapter also addresses the issue of food standards and discusses the controversies around chlorinated chicken, hormone-treated beef and Genetically Modified and genetically edited food. The authors seem to be suggesting that there is no evidence that these practices threaten human health but have been banned by the EU on the grounds of the ‘Precautionary Principle’. The Consumers chapters ends with the following two recommendations, you can make of the second one what you want!

• After leaving the EU Customs Union, the UK should unilaterally phase out tariffs that increase consumer food prices and complicate new trade deals.
• The Food Standards Agency should be given new powers and resources to collate, commission, and review scientific evidence on food safety and animal welfare.

Producers
This is a brutal section as it discusses the decline of British farming over the years, it takes no prisoners and offers no solace.

The chapter suggests that UK farming income in 2016 was £3.6b which included £3.1b in subsidies so actually farming only made a profit of £500m. Indeed they also suggest that between 1997 and 2007 farming profit was below the subsidy level so in effect agriculture produced a negative effect on the economy overall. The recommendations from this chapter puts much of British agriculture to the sword.

• The UK should work to phase out direct subsidies for agricultural production and income support. This will free up Government revenue to fund other taxpayer priorities, such as the NHS.
• Any remaining subsides should be redirected towards protection for natural and public goods, and increasing R&D to boost innovation and the sector’s long-term productivity.
• The Government should work to identify environmentally suitable freed-up land that can be used for housing or commercial development, sharing the planning uplift with the original farmer.
• Subsidies should be phased out gradually over a five-year period from 2020, with farmers given the option of receiving a final payment as a single one-off payment instead.
• Seeking self-sufficiency in food should not be a goal of agricultural policy.

Rural Economy
This section challenges the accepted wisdom that agriculture is a core part of the rural economy. The authors state that in terms Gross Value Added agriculture, forestry and fishing represent just 2% of the rural economy.

The chapter begins to discuss the environment and highlights the importance of natural capital,

Conventional economic statistics only capture a limited proportion of the value created by rural areas, much of which takes the form of positive externalities. The ONS’s preliminary work on natural capital identifies as many as 29 separate mechanisms by which the natural environment can create value, including: agricultural production, timber, wind power, wildlife, air pollution removal, waste water cleaning, flood protection, scientific, and scientific and educational interactions. The recreational value of day trips alone to the natural environment was estimated to be £6.5 billion — not far below the entire GVA of agriculture.

In other words, nobody really expects areas like Dartmoor, the Lake District, or the New Forest to be highly productive from a narrow economic point of view. Greater productivity of agriculture allows it to operate in a more intensive fashion, freeing up significant land areas for managed re-wilding, increasing biodiversity, and preserving many of Britain’s most beautiful landscapes. As science writer Matt Ridley has argued:

Post-Brexit environment policy should be one of gardening: managing for a diversity of outcomes in different places. Productive farms here, deep forests there, wild moorlands elsewhere. Freed from the one-size-fits-all shackles of the EU, we should localise our policies, and host as many habitats and species as the climate will support.

The text suggests that many current agricultural workers could in effect become ‘gardeners’ tending natural capital via payments for ecosystem services.

But in a world such as this what about farming?

Here the authors argue that British agricultural should move away from its productionist past and through innovation become a world leader in AgriTech (Tim Lang and Michael Heasman in their 2015 book Food Wars call this the Life Science Integrated paradigm). This is the world of biotechnology, GM and the use of enzymes, robot driven tractors, precision drilling, fertilising and pesticide application , the use of ‘big’ data and drones. Some will be able to go down this route but not everyone …….

Here are the recommendations from the Rural economy chapter.

• Environment: preserve and enhance the UK’s Natural Capital
• Connectivity: enable rural workers and businesses to integrate withthe wider economy
• Innovation: use the opportunities from Brexit to become a world leader in AgriTech

Environment
This section sets out that agriculture dominates land use and the current model of exploitation is simply unsustainable.

It goes on to talk about water pollution, air pollution and climate change, soil degradation and the impacts on biodiversity. It states that reform should focus on the ‘Payments for Ecosystem Services’ model and that this should be integrated with biodiversity offsetting. It argues that forestry and agriculture need to be much more integrated. The recommendations include:-

• Rather than giving production subsidies to farmers under the CAP, all remaining public support should go towards public goods, such as preserving and enhancing the natural environment and the environmental and aesthetic benefits that derive from it.
• This should be achieved using a ‘Payments for Ecosystem Services’ approach, linked to the Defra 25 Year Environment Plan and the work of the Natural Capital Committee. Payments should be available both to farms and other landowners, creating a competitive market for the provision of ecosystem services.
• As part of Defra’s 25 Year Plan for the Environment, Government should consult on the most appropriate mechanisms for commissioning ecosystem services (including consideration of the optimal scale), and explore how they could work alongside tools such as regulation and biodiversity offsetting.
• Develop an integrated land management policy framework, which facilitates the deeper integration of forestry and agriculture. Explore the potential of re-forestation as a cost-effective approach to mitigating carbon emissions.
• Perverse EU rules such as the crop diversification rule should be reformed or abandoned.
• Transpose the key environmental directives that govern the environment — notably the Water Framework Directive, and the Habitats Directives — so that there is no post-Brexit period in which no laws apply.

The report finishes as follows.

As described above, Payments for Ecosystem Services can be used to achieve a range of environmental benefits, such as carbon sequestration, improving water quality, reducing flood risk, or improving the landscape. For other goals, where valuation is harder, regulation may be more efficient. In this context, who will decide what outcomes are desired, and in which locations? Will different locations pursue different objectives? What is the approach scale to make these decisions?

As a practical example, consider the Lake District — recently identified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Lake District is regarded as having a landscape of great beauty, in particular its cultural landscape. The current landscape is the product of centuries of human management, in particular of upland sheep farming, which has resulted in deforestation and relatively low levels of biodiversity. In the post-Brexit farming policy framework described in this report, should this landscape be preserved as it is to maximise its cultural and heritage benefit? Or conversely should it be ‘re-wilded’, as suggested by some commentators, and returned to nature to maximise its biodiversity and wider environmental benefit?

These are the sorts of difficult decisions that will need to be made in the creation of Defra’s 25 Year Plan for the Environment.

So does this document contain the blue print for the Defra 25 Year Plans for Farming and the Environment? Of course we will have to wait and see. This neoliberal future certainly appears to offer huge opportunities for the environment but at what price to farming? The report openly talks about re-structuring the industry – this means forcing uneconomic businesses off  the land freeing it up for other uses such as housing and re-wilding.

What does it mean for Dartmoor? It would appear that the money will be there for hill-farmers but will this be for livestock production or their potential future new role as ‘gardeners’?

 Polly Toynbee, writing in the Guardian (see here) has said ‘no wonder farmers fear the Brexit wolf in sheep’s clothing. Most farmers voted leave. Now they are beginning to dread the withdrawal of EU subsidy and see their traditional protectors in the Tory party as enemies’.

The vision set out in this report shares little common ground with the NFU’s  ‘recipe’ for success post-Brexit which consisted of the following three ‘ingredients’

• Access to the Single Market
• Access to labour
• A new agricultural policy which facilitated productive, progressive and profitable farming

The National Trust’s Director General has also joined in the debate saying that the ‘countryside faces damaging uncertainty unless the current level of subsidies are maintained for farmers. The Trust said affordable, high-quality food and wildlife-friendly farming can be secured for the current subsidy of £3bn a year (see here).

Finally, Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of Government at Kings College London has raised the prospect of the need for a second referendum (see here)  ‘Brexit after all raises fundamental, indeed existential, issues for the future of the country. That is why the final deal needs the consent not only of parliament, but of a sovereign people’.

So much up in the air, so many lives in limbo, one person’s threat is another’s opportunity.

A tale of two speeches

Today sees the beginning to the NFU’s 2 day annual conference, being held in Birmingham. The event started with an opening address from NFU president Meurig Raymond which was then followed up by a speech from the Defra Secretary of State Andrea Leadsom.

It wasn’t long before Raymond was asking for more action on badgers and bTb including an extension of the geographic area where culling could take place. He then went on to make an impassioned plea to allow the continued us of glyphosate. He talked about a new report that the NFU had commissioned  ‘Contributions of UK Agriculture’ by Development Economics which suggested that for every £1 invested in British agriculture the country saw a return of £7.40 – you can download the report here. This led him to call for  continued farm support / subsidy post 2020.

He also set out a ‘recipe’ for success post-Brexit which consisted of the following three ‘ingredients’

• Access to the Single Market
• Access to labour
• A new agricultural policy which facilitated productive, progressive and profitable farming

A classic NFU / Raymond performance which left me feeling rather uncomfortable, the implication being that if the Government doesn’t listen, then the farming industry will face disaster. You can read his full speech here.

Andrea Leadsom then took to the stage and whilst most, if all all, of the questions that the NFU delegates wanted answering were not I thought there were some interesting little nuggets. (You can read her full speech here.)

She posed the question ‘What kind of industry to be want agriculture to be post-Brexit?’, to answer this she said Defra would be guided by  5 principles:

• Trade – tariff-free and frictionless cross-border trade with Europe.
• Productive and competitive – improved skills, leadership and innovation with technology
• The Environment – a fair return from the market but incentivised and rewarded for caring for the environment
• Trust – New agricultural support policy which promote  animal and plant health and welfare
• Resilience – to commodity prices fluctuations, bTb and flooding

Regarding the Brexit negotiations she said “Those negotiations will take time, and change is, of course, inevitable”, prepare yourselves the status quo will not continue.

About the call for seasonal workers she said “we mustn’t forget that a key factor behind the vote to leave the EU was to control immigration”, you can read into that what you will, but I took it to mean that agriculture was going to have to find new ways of solving this problem, she later alluded to the use of new technologies.

When talking about future policies for farm support / subsidies she said  “And how do we devise a system of support that properly takes into account the diverse types of farming, and the challenges unique to each? So, for example, how can we ensure a more tailored approach – one that recognises the needs of hill farmers alongside those of arable farmers and protects our precious uplands as well as our productive fenland?”. The use of the language ‘precious uplands’ is important and I think signals again that hill-farmers will be supported in return for looking after the uplands. Interesting she also mentioned the protection of our ‘productive fenlands’ I have written before about how intensive agriculture in the fens is leading to the wholesale loss of the peat based soils (see here). Is this remark a signal that in future these soils must be conserved and not just allowed to oxidise and blow away?

When it came to the environment she said “British farmers don’t only produce world-class food, but as part of that process, they care for and shape some of our most iconic landscapes. Yet, whilst 70% of our land is farmed, just a small percentage of funding is directed towards the provision of these environmental services.” 

“So, alongside a fair return from the market, farmers must feel incentivised and rewarded for caring for the environment. The current CAP has improved over recent years, but in trying to do more for the environment, farmers have found themselves confronted with unnecessary bureaucracy.”

“So as we leave the EU, we have an opportunity to take a fresh look at these schemes and think about what mechanisms are needed to promote the twin goals of productive farming and environmental improvement. I want to consider, for example, how we will strike the right balance between national frameworks for support measures whilst tailoring them to local landscapes and catchments.”

This is the clearest articulation of ‘public money for public goods’ stated by Defra to date.

I predict a battle royale now between Defra and the NFU. Yes, Defra will negotiate for access to the Single Market – tariff free, but they won’t cave in over migrant labour and future farm support will be for ecosystem services.

This is not what the NFU wanted to hear but in return Defra will sweeten the bitter pill by extending the badger cull, permit the continued use of glyphosate, will provide bridging loans for those yet to receive their Basic Payment Scheme money and in some circumstances pay farmers who allow their land to flood under the auspices of ecosystem services.

I will be interested to see if anyone else has this take on the two speeches!

A couple of important environmental Brexit reports

The first of these is ‘Exiting the EU, Not the Environment’ written by Caroline Lucas MP with the help of David Baldock and the Global Justice network.

It summaries 10 environmental challenges and then sets out a 5 point ‘Green Guarantee. The report concludes by listing 153 (out the 1100 EU pieces of legislation which Defra will have to navigate across to UK legislation if there is to be no reduction in environmental protection for the UK once we leave the EU.

It is a very good document whatever your political persuasion – you can download it here. It should be required reading for all those interested in Brexit environmental politics.

The second report is for the House of Lords European Union Committee and is entitled ‘Brexit: environment and climate change’.

The summary concludes:-

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) faces an enormous challenge as the UK approaches Brexit. Together with the Devolved Administrations, it is responsible for repatriating and replacing the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy. Alongside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) it must also map the extent to which environmental and climate change policies can be preserved through the Great Repeal Bill. Furthermore, Defra will need to design regulatory structures to ensure that environmental protections are enforced as effectively after Brexit as before. Resolving the tensions inherent in these competing tasks will be vital if the Government is to deliver on its commitments to leave behind a better environment than it inherited.

You can download that report here.

There is a lot to be done …….

National Sheep Association – Hard Brexit should not sacrifice sheep sector

There is a letter in today’s Farmers Weekly by Phil Stocker of the National Sheep Association about how the sheep sector could be seriously affected by a hard Brexit and the loss of subsidies.

There can’t be a hill-farmer in the country who is not deeply worried

Last year the NSA published a document about sheep in the uplands – I don’t agree with all of it but it is good and worth a read – download it here.

A tale of two lambs

I went deliberately to Waitrose yesterday in search of some English lamb mince – what I thought would be straightforwards turned out not to be so. No English lamb at all of any sort was to be found, instead the shelves were full of New Zealand lamb …… This led me to investigate why this might be.

It is quite complicated! Firstly as a nation we don’t eat that much lamb and mutton – apparently about 5kg per person per year – see here, and we are basically self sufficient in lamb. Defra told us that the national sheep flock in 2015 was estimated to be around 23.1 million animals – see here and Monbiot calculated that sheep occupy around 4 million ha. of land – the majority in the uplands – see here.

So if we are self sufficient in lamb why do we import lamb from New Zealand?

Firstly UK sheep farmers export around the same amount of lamb / sheep products as the UK imports (which mostly comes from NZ). So if we didn’t import lamb there wouldn’t be the supply to meet the demand.

Secondly lamb is a seasonal product, the UK is in the northern hemisphere whilst of course NZ is in the southern hemisphere. As a result their seasons are complimentary. UK lamb is mainly available from June – December, whilst NZ lamb is in season from December to early June.

Thirdly, as a nation we are rather fussy about what cuts of lamb we like to eat, we tend to prefer legs and chops, as the result of this the rest of the meat cuts and products are exported to countries abroad where ‘lesser’ quality cuts are eaten. In addition much more lamb is eaten that mutton in the UK.

Fourthly, is the issue of currency rates. When Sterling is strong then lamb is uncompetitive on the continent and UK exports drop. However when Sterling is strong, this is the time when NZ wants to export lamb to Britain as they get good prices for their products, leading to a potential conflict with UK farmers – see here for an example from Wales.

Conversely when Sterling is weak (as now) lamb becomes competitive on the continent and exports rise, but imports from NZ drop.

Lamb is a favourite Easter food and of course at this time UK lambs are still growing on the hills and in the fields so the lamb that is available is from NZ and this has led to people asking why UK supermarkets don’t stock UK lamb – see here.

Interesting! But there is more …..

People often complain that lamb is very expensive and why should this be the case? Well a comparison with pigs and pork explains quite a lot. The average sow produces  8 piglets on a four month cycle and each piglet after 5 months will weigh 250lbs and can go to market. Pigs can be kept in a pen measuring 30 x 30 feet. By comparison a ewe can produce 1 – 2 lambs per annum and needs 0.75 acres per animal.

Finally, look how this might change after Brexit – the pound is now very low compared to where it was 7 months ago so conditions are ideal for UK farmers to export to the Continent and elsewhere – both markets come courtesy of the EU Single Market.

If negotiations to secure exporting access to foreign markets takes many years then UK farmers won’t be able to export.

The strategy for sheep farming may then have to change – one option might be, especially in the lowlands, to produce lambs which are less seasonal. For example Dorset Breed sheep can produce lambs throughout the year so an increase in this breed might allow lamb to become available all year round.

Difficult times ahead.

 

 

A plan for Britain?

In case you missed the fuller details here is the 12 point plan that Theresa May announced yesterday regarding the UK’s decision to leave the EU – entitled ‘Plan for Britain’.

1. Provide certainty about the process of leaving the EU
2. Control of our own laws
3. Strengthen the union between the four nations of the UK
4. Maintain the Common Travel Area with Ireland
5. Control of immigration coming from the EU
6. Rights of EU nationals in Britain and rights of British nationals in the EU
7. Protect workers’ rights
8. Free trade with European markets through a free trade agreement
9. New trade agreements with other countries
10. The best place for science and innovation
11. Co-operation in the fight against terrorism
12. A smooth and orderly Brexit

Pretty disappointing not to see either the environment or climate change specifically mentioned.

The New Economics Foundation published a short response to the speech – here and it suggested that the government’s plan would lead to reduced workers’ rights and watered down environmental protection.

Donald Tusk, the EU President issued this tweet

Quite a lot of people on Twitter were suggesting that May was trying to ‘have her cake and eat it’, but I guess you have to start  the process somewhere.

There is a long process ahead now and let’s hope it doesn’t just lead to a cliff edge.

 

 

Reaction to Theresa May’s Brexit speech

Various representatives of the farming industry have been expressing their opinions after Theresa May’s speech on Brexit where she clearly stated that we will not be in the Single Market or part of the Customs Union. See here.

Here are the views of the National Farmer’s Union.

Here are the views on a ‘hard Brexit’ (which is what we are getting) from the National Sheep Association.

Whilst it had been trailed that we would be leaving the Single Market, the reality is now beginning to sink in.

Upland farmers in particular must be in shock.

It is now very difficult to predict what is going to happen next – nothing I suspect until Article 50 is triggered in March and then maybe nothing substantive until a ‘deal’ is done.

That’s a long time to wait immersed in uncertainty.

 

 

 

 

Monbiot in Farmers Weekly

The current edition of Farmers Weekly contains an interview with George Monbiot – here it is

And here is the editorial

I was pretty surprised to find this – farming at the moment is really on the back food – looks like there will no access to the Single Market and George Monbiot’s views are now becoming pretty mainstream! Something else for the farming lobby to counter.

The Uplands Alliance and the National Trust

The Uplands Alliance held a meeting yesterday in Cumbria about the future of the uplands after Brexit.

Dame Helen Ghosh, the Director General of the National Trust was one of the speakers.

Here full speech can be read here. She finished her presentation with the following words ‘There is change coming and we need to face into this together.  But upland farmers have proved over the centuries that they are resilient and adaptable and those traits will be needed again over the next decade.  If we work together, with a clear sense of our common goals, there is a bright future for farming, landscapes and nature. You can count on our commitment and support.’

The National Trust and various Cumbrian farmers have recently been involved in a very public spat over Thorneythwaite Farm – see here and therefore this speech by Ghosh appears to have gone a long way to re-build bridges.

As I have said before – united we stand, divided we fall