The EconomistNovember 28th 2020 Britain 532 November 11th will allow the agriculture
department to phase out per-hectare pay-
ments over the next seven years, and spend
more on public goods such as nature. It has
pledged to keep the overall level of support
constant during this parliament, which
will end in 2024.
If the government can pull this off, it
will profoundly change farming in Eng-
land (Northern Ireland, Scotland and
Wales, which together have 48% of the Un-
ited Kingdom’s agricultural land, are mov-
ing more slowly in a similar direction).
Farmland prices will probably fall, as will
rents for tenant farmers, who farm one-
third of the land in England. Some who
were surviving on subsidies will be driven
out of farming—the agriculture bill allows
the government to support such people for
a few years by means of “de-linked” pay-
ments. Biodiversity ought to recover. But
two things stand in the way of change: poli-
tics and sheep.
Ever since an agriculture bill was pub-
lished in 2017, farmers’ organisations have
protested that the government is empha-
sising greenery more than growing. They
have persuaded some mps. “Surely the
primary public good—the most essential
good there is—is food itself,” said Danny
Kruger, a Conservative, during a debate ear-
lier this year. The National Farmers Union
argues that the coronavirus pandemic
shows how important it is for a country to
produce its own food. Britain currently
grows about two-thirds of what it con-
sumes; that share should not be allowed to
fall much further, the nfusays.
Such arguments “are really specious”,
says Ian Bateman, a professor of environ-
mental economics at the University of Exe-
ter. Food is a private good, not a public
good. Britain’s food security is guaranteed
by its wealth and by robust supply chains,
which have held up remarkably well during
the pandemic. The agriculture bill was
nonetheless amended during its passage
through Parliament. The government must
now “have regard to the need to encourage
the production of food by farmers in Eng-
land” and must report every five years on
food security. Both changes seem innocu-
ous. But they could be used as a wedge that
will allow farmers to obtain more support
for business as usual.
The nfuhas also tried to persuade the
government to ban imports of food that do
not meet British animal-welfare or envi-
ronmental standards. American chlorine-
washed chicken and hormone-treated beef
are commonly cited as products that
should be excluded on these grounds. But
such a ban, if enacted, could be deployed
against many other foods. For example,
Britain currently imports rapeseed (canola,
to Americans) from countries that are al-
lowed to use a group of pesticides known
as neonicotinoids, which are banned in the
eu, and therefore in Britain.
Amendments to this effect were added
by the House of Lords only to be rejected by
the Commons. But the campaign is likely to
revive as Britain gets into trade negotia-
tions. It is backed by an impressive and di-
verse line-up, from the Mail on Sundayto
television chefs such as Prue Leith and Ja-
mie Oliver to environmental groups like
Greenpeace, and is hugely popular. If noth-
ing else, a campaign that focuses on other
countries’ dismal environmental stan-
dards distracts attention from Britain’s
own poor record.
A second problem, which involves up-
land farms and especially sheep, may prove
even harder to solve. In June last year Brit-
ain had 33m sheep and lambs, many of
them destined to be killed and exported to
the eu. In England 30% of them are in hilly
regions classed as “disadvantaged”, which
include the Lake District, the Peak District,
Exmoor and Dartmoor—the country’s most
sublime corners. Farms in these areas are
often economically marginal even with
subsidies. The average income from agri-
cultural activity alone, before subsidies, in
severely disadvantaged areas in 2018-19
was minus £22,000.
Whereas almost everyone can agree
about how lowland crop farms ought to
change—to become like Mr Topham’s, only
more so—upland livestock farms divide
opinion. Environmentalists such as
George Monbiot, a campaigning writer, ar-
gue that sheep farming is almost invariably
destructive, creating deserts of nibbled
grass, and that the land should revert to
scrub and trees. Nonsense, retorts James
Rebanks, a Lake District shepherd (and a
green after his own fashion) in his book
“English Pastoral”: “Abandoning farmland
isn’t remotely the same thing as restoring a
wild ecosystem—plagues of deer replace
hordes of sheep and little good is
achieved.”
“What people want is countryside easy
to walk in and look at, a rough carpet kept
free of messy undergrowth,” observed Da-
vid Lowenthal and Hugh Prince, respec-tively an American and a British geogra-
pher, in 1965. That is probably still true of
the English. Although ecologists might not
approve, people’s eyes have grown fond of
nibbled landscapes. And that is a problem
for policymakers.
Jane Bassett farms sheep and cattle on
73 hectares of the Peak District. The small
grassy fields on her land are divided by
stone walls and scattered with mature
trees. She has not applied for any environ-
mental payment schemes, finding them
too much hassle—“a lot of bureaucracy for
fourteen hundred pounds”. She argues that
she is creating environmental goods all the
same. People flock to the area to admire
and walk in the beautiful landscape and, if
she is lucky, stay in her bed-and-breakfast.
“That vista”, she says, “is maintained by
having farmers in place.”
After many months of work, the Depart-
ment for Environment, Food and Rural Af-
fairs has provided scant details of the “en-
vironmental land management” payment
scheme that will be tested next year and
fully introduced in 2024. Upland farmers
do not believe that the new scheme will
provide much money for hard-to-quantify
public goods such as landscape. If they are
right, the grand plan to replace per-hectare
subsidies with green payments could be
derailed quickly.
Upland farmers can plead poverty more
convincingly than other farmers in Eng-
land; they may also be able to point to Scot-
tish and Welsh farmers, who will continue
receiving automatic subsidies for longer.
They are quite likely to enjoy support from
English town-dwellers, who associate
them with holidays. People care about the
environment. But they might turn out to
care more about landscape. 7Flaps down
Britain, wild bird population, by habitat
1975=100Source:BritishTrustforOrnithology12010080604020
1975 80 90 2000 1810Water and wetlandWoodlandFarmlandWhere sheep may safely overgraze