In praise of the National Trust for making the case for radical reform of farming policy

I am wrapping a few things up before heading off on holiday tomorrow to our family hut on the Northumberland coast (via RSPB Saltholme to help celebrate Hen Harrier Day).

Before I go, I wanted to reflect on the great intervention by National Trust on the future of agriculture and the environment this week.  This received good media coverage including the Today Programme, and Channel 4 News.   

The biggest membership organisation in the UK has put nature front and centre in its response to the EU referendum outcome and I am delighted.

In a speech to Countryfile Live, the Trust’s Director General, Dame Helen Ghosh argued for fundamental reform to agriculture policy if we are to restore nature across the four countries of the UK, rather than just manage its decline.   Helen outlined six principles for the future of farming which we wholeheartedly support.

Andy Hay's image of stone-curlew: a species dependent on willing landowners and well funded wildlife friendly farming schemes

Many have welcomed the debate.  Predictably perhaps, some have chosen to frame what Helen said as out of touch, as the ‘same old same old’ from farmer bashing conservationists. These letters in the Telegraph give a bit of a taste. They remind me of a colleague being asked by a farmer, “do these people want feeding?”

But this sort of response totally misinterprets what the National Trust is saying.

If you read Helen’s speech, she was clear that we need to look forward - not look backward with a nostalgia for what was, but towards a ‘21^st century version’ of a world rich in nature. She was clear that the future of farming and the environment is intimately linked, with the former depending to a great extent on the sustainable stewardship of the latter. Few would deny that things are massively out of kilter as things stand, and the status quo is simply not sustainable.

Yet whenever organisations like the National Trust get involved in this debate, and make the case that policy needs to drive positive change for farmers and nature, some try to shut them up by the all too familiar, yet stale, dichotomous arguments of ‘nature vs food’. Everything we have done in the last decade or so (e.g. at Hope Farm in Cambridgeshire and through our work with thousands of wildlife-friendly farmers) has been to try and demonstrate that this is false dichotomy; that we can indeed have our cake and eat it.

A healthy crop at RSPB Hope Farm where we have increase farmland birds by >200% while maintaining yield

No one would deny that the maintenance of food security is one of any government’s most important jobs. What we (within the conservation and progressive farming sector) are calling for is a move away from a transparently bonkers system, where we soak the countryside in public money with no real aim or strategy, and get very little in return.

It’s completely reasonable to suggest that, after decades of environmental degradation, more of the public support that goes to agriculture should be focused on the restoration of the environment. This should be coupled with steps that enable farmers to get better value out of the supply chain, breaking the subsidy dependence that has trapped so many in the industry for so long.  

And yes, the Government should support innovation in agriculture. No one is saying that this isn’t a legitimate public policy goal. But the current system does not do this. To defend such a transparent waste of public money is not politically, financially or environmentally tenable, and attempts to do so will only lead the farming industry into a political cul-de-sac.

What the National Trust was doing this week was to get on the front foot, and make the positive case for why and how we should support agriculture and land management in a post-Brexit world. Many farmers will recognise this, and understand that in a situation where spending on farming is set against the NHS and schools, we will all need to work much harder to demonstrate the added value taxpayers get beyond what they pay for as consumers.

So for making the positive case, and for getting the post-Brexit debate off to a constructive start, I say ‘congratulations to the National Trust’.

In the autumn, I look forward to joining forces with the Trust and many others with interests in food, farming and nature conservation to make the case for a new land management policy fit for the 21^st century.

For now though, I’m off on holiday.  Enjoy the rest of the summer.