The EconomistNovember 28th 2020 Leaders 15M
any of the claims made by Brexiteershaveturnedouttobe
rubbish. Contrary to their assurances, Britain will not soon
be signing a trade deal with America. The border between Ireland
and Northern Ireland, which the Brexiteers said would not be a
problem, turns out to be a big one. Britain will probably end up
letting French and Spanish trawlers into its waters. But one of the
Brexiteers’ boasts is entirely right: Britain really ought to be able
to come up with better agricultural policies outside the eu.
It can hardly do worse. The common agricultural policy (cap),
which Britain leaves on January 1st after 47 years, has been a
lousy deal for the country. At considerable cost to the taxpayer, it
has subsidised intensive farming methods that have denuded
the countryside (see Britain section), causing more ecological
damage than climate change. Since 1970 the population of nest-
ing farmland birds has been cut in half. Tariffs have raised the
price of food. Some farmers have benefited from subsidies. But
others have not, because the subsidies are capitalised into land
values, raising the cost of getting into farming.
Soon after the Brexit vote in 2016, ministers talked bravely
about doing away with farming subsidies and paying for public
goods. Yet England has moved as slowly as a ruminating cow.
With just five weeks left in the cap, and some subsidy cuts begin-
ning soon after, it has provided few details about what will re-
place them. Northern Ireland, Scotland and
Wales are even tardier. They will stick with the
old subsidy system for the next few years.
For almost half a century Britain has barely
had to think about creating policies for 70% of
its land area. Now, amid a pandemic and Brexit,
it is confronted with fundamental questions.
Should the country subsidise farming? How
should it help the environment? What should it
do about food imports? All these questions are made trickier by
the deeply peculiar way in which Britons think about the land.
There are good arguments for abolishing all public support
and leaving farming to the market. The original rationale for
farm payments—to boost domestic food production—has not
made sense for decades. Countries like Britain are secure be-
cause they are wealthy and because international supply chains
work, not because they grow lots of food. And subsidies are a
crutch for indifferent farmers. After New Zealand did away with
its subsidies in the 1980s, some farms went bust. Fewer than had
been feared, though—and the survivors became technologically
sophisticated and export-oriented.
Britain is not quite like New Zealand, for reasons that go to the
heart of Britons’ odd relationship with the countryside. In New
Zealand, and also in America, people distinguish between farm-
ing and nature. Farmland is something that you might travel
through in order to get somewhere pretty. Britons expect their
agricultural land to be beautiful. Even national parks like Dart-
moor and the Lake District are mostly farmed. English nature po-
etry is stuffed with shepherds, wheatfields and skylarks, John
Clare’s “sweet minstrel of the farm and plough”. Rambling along
farmland footpaths is important to many Britons, and has been
especially so during the pandemic. When other entertainmentswerecancelled,thosewhocould grabbed their boots and headed
for the fields with the dog.
British farmers are expected to produce not only skylarks and
hawthorn, but increasingly to help with flood management and
soaking up carbon dioxide, too. So it makes sense to pay them
something. Today they get £2.5bn ($3.3bn) a year simply for
farming, and can apply for another £500m for worthy things like
planting hedgerows. One sum is too large, the other too small. If
farming subsidies were cut, along with the tax breaks on capital
gains, inheritance and fuel (outrageously, farmers pay very little
duty on the “red diesel” they use) there would be money to spare.
There is already a system, albeit a stingy, bureaucratic one, for
paying farmers to take corners of their land out of production.
Leave 16 square metres of a field fallow, so a skylark could nest in
it, and you get £9. That is fine, but the taxpayer should also pay
for wholesale changes, such as “rewilding” or small fields, which
research shows are more biodiverse than large ones. They are
also more interesting for walkers, as anyone who has tramped
across the breadbasket of eastern England can attest.
Civil servants are now working on a new English schedule of
payments for green activities, which are supposed to be intro-
duced in 2024. That is the wrong approach, in a couple of ways.
Because different parts of the country would benefit from differ-
ent things (more hedgerows in East Anglia, bet-
ter stone walls in the Yorkshire Dales) local au-
thorities, not central government, should set
the priorities and distribute some of the money.
It would be better still if reverse auctions were
used. At the moment, officials must guess the
price that will induce enough farmers to plant
hedges or set aside land for butterflies. Amer-
ica’s Department of Agriculture asks them to
bid, then takes the best offers. That reveals the true cost.
Britain must also deal with the vexed issue of food imports.
Farmers’ organisations argue that the country should not import
foods that are harder on the environment or on animals than
would be allowed under domestic rules. An impressive co-
alition, ranging from celebrity chefs to shepherds, backs the
campaign, which raises the spectres of American chlorine-
washed chicken and hormone-treated beef. Most Britons agree.The grass below—above the vaulted sky
The government is refusing to be so bound—a deeply unpopular
decision that is nonetheless correct. In practice, it will remain
tied to eufood standards because of the overriding importance
of trade with the bloc. It should not restrict its freedom any more
than that. To insist that imports meet domestic standards ig-
nores the fact that other countries have different climates and
pests, so need different tools. East African countries have spent
the past year fighting locust swarms with some insecticides that
are banned in Britain—but then, Britain has no locusts. If Britons
care about farming methods in other countries, let them show it
by their purchases, as they have shown that they prefer free-
range eggs. The government, meanwhile, should start repairing
half a century’s-worth of damage to the countryside. 7Ploughing its own furrow
Outside the eu, Britain can farm greener and betterAgriculture in Britain