Farming subsidies trigger row over future of British countryside

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The UK government is under fire over the troubled rollout of its latest post-Brexit farming subsidy scheme, as the country grapples with the challenge of balancing green targets with food self-sufficiency.

The introduction of the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), one of three new subsidies, has angered some farmers who have been receiving fewer payments than they did previously.

Delays to the scheme have meant the payments farmers received under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy have started to be phased out before the new programme for farmers in England was ready.

Helen Drinkall, a livestock farmer from Chorley, Lancashire, told the Financial Times that she was now paid 50 per cent less than before the UK government starting phasing out CAP payments in 2021.

“It’s left us scared to invest . . . we don’t know what direction to take the business in,” she said. “Our income is significantly dropping, but our costs, as in every industry, are rocketing.”

The National Farmers Union (NFU) has slammed the “totally unacceptable” delays, saying they will leave members with cash flow problems.

The tensions are part of a broader disagreement over the future of farming and land use in the UK, with some farmers arguing that the government is encouraging the removal of land out of food production.

The government’s post-Brexit farming subsidy regime, the Environmental Land Management schemes or ELMs, applies to England and includes payments to incentivise farmers to restore the natural environment and adopt sustainable farming practices such as soil management. Scotland and Wales have separated devolved systems.

The Countryside Stewardship and Landscape Recovery subsidies pays farmers for restoring woodland, for example, while the SFI encourages them to look after their farmland with measures such as reducing pesticide use.

“Planting trees is OK but it’s not farming, is it?” said Drinkall. “We’re farmers.”

Earlier this month, members of the farming sector met in parliament to hear environment secretary Thérèse Coffey commit to boost food production and promote the SFI.

“Globally, food production is going to come under pressure,” Coffey told the event organised by Back British Farming, a campaign led by the NFU. “That’s why we’ve got to invest in UK farmers and their productivity and their profitability.”

On the sidelines of the event in parliament, NFU president Minette Batters said offering farmers incentives to take land out of food production risked eroding Britain’s self-sufficiency.

“We want to do more for the environment. We want to hit the legislative targets,” she said. “But equally, we’ve got to be producing food. That’s the first job of any farmer.” 

The NFU’s stance is by no means wholly representative of farmers’ views. Mark Tufnell, president of the Country Land and Business Association, a representative body, rejected “the false choice between food production and environmental delivery — the two can and must go hand-in-hand”.

“Whilst short-term delays to the rollout of the schemes are frustrating, so are the attempts to undermine them,” he added, insisting that government and industry had roles to play in ensuring the schemes commanded the confidence of farmers.

Only a fraction of the 82,000 farmers eligible for SFI applied to receive the payments during pilot stages last year. Some sector insiders have previously raised concerns that the new schemes will not draw enough participants to make them effective.

The environment department said applications for this year had only just opened, but that 9,000 farmers had expressed interest so far.

In response to concerns farmers raised about food production, Coffey told the Financial Times that the government was investing to boost productivity, including by passing the Genetic Technology Act. The legislation would allow scientists to develop gene editing to create foods that are more adaptable and resilient to weather and climate shocks.

The government has a legal duty to assess the impact of its schemes on food production. In April, it said in response to a report by a House of Lords Committee that it could meet nature restoration and net zero goals without compromising on its commitment to maintain food security.

The peers backed a land use framework and a committee to track and evaluate the competing demands made on England’s land — of which 63.1 per cent is used for agriculture, according to official data.

The environment department, which is due to publish a framework later this year, said that because 57 per cent of agricultural output comes from just 33 per cent of the farmed land area, it was possible to lose the least productive land with minimal impact on food production.

Sue Pritchard, chief executive of the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, a non-profit group, agreed it was possible to cut carbon emissions from agriculture and at the same time grow food.

“Land is central to so many critical national priorities . . . Yet if we try to do all these things on different parcels of land, we would need another UK to deliver targets,” she said.

Farming minister Mark Spencer said the government was “committed to do all we can to support British farmers and our flexible new farming schemes have something on offer for every type of farm business”.

However, Adrian Steele, organic sector development adviser at the Soil Association, a trade body that certifies organic farm produce, said what at inception had seemed a “properly informed programme” was now being implemented in a “piecemeal and reactive” way.

In farming communities, Steele said that something akin to a culture war was playing out over the ELMs rollout, in which some felt that the green priorities of an urban elite were being foisted on the countryside.

“Farmers should feel like they are part of the solution,” he said. “At the moment there’s no sense of everyone working together.”

Source: ft.com