One of many biggest delights as I stroll round my farm in south-east Cornwall is seeing and listening to the abundance of wildlife that thrives on the land.
There are deer peeking out among the many barley, fieldmice scampering out and in of hedgerows, and the earth beneath my toes teems with worms and dung beetles — a certain signal of wholesome soil.
In summer season I hear the candy tune of the skylark excessive above, — and plenty of different species of fowl, some endangered, thrive right here, together with the very uncommon grasshopper warbler. Farm and nature working hand in hand, symbiosis at its greatest.
However the Authorities sees it somewhat otherwise.
Below the Native Nature Restoration scheme and the Panorama Restoration scheme, farmers can be paid £800 million a yr to ‘make house for nature’. (Inventory picture)
Agriculture is on a collision course with nature, in its view, as evidenced by the 2 new schemes introduced this week by George Eustice, the Secretary of State for Setting, Meals and Rural Affairs.
Below the Native Nature Restoration scheme and the Panorama Restoration scheme, farmers can be paid £800 million a yr to ‘make house for nature’ by changing fields of crops and livestock with wildlife habitats resembling peat bogs and wetlands, planting bushes and establishing new nature reserves.
Great as that sounds — who does not need extra wildlife and woodlands? — this simplistic both/or strategy to the countryside is doubtlessly disastrous for farmers, customers and, paradoxically, nature too.
George Eustice grew up on a fruit farm, not removed from me in Cornwall. If anybody ought to perceive that what is sweet for the farmer can be good for the land, it’s George.
He has both forgotten or been overruled by the environmental zealots who’ve the ear of Boris Johnson and are pushing a slender inexperienced agenda that may do extra hurt than good.
‘Make house for nature’ implies that farming and nature can’t co-exist, that one should give solution to the opposite — farming to rewilding. That is nonsense, and my farm and others are proof of this.
But the inexperienced brigade has one way or the other satisfied ministers that farmed land is broken land, so farms have to be carved up into distinct areas for nature and agriculture.
They need 30 per cent of farmland ‘rewilded’ — by which all of them too typically imply deserted, left to brambles and nettles which choke different vegetation, creating scrubland that does nothing for variety.
One other consequence of taking productive farmland out of manufacturing is that farmers can be pressured to make the remaining areas yield much more to maintain their enterprises going, which inevitably means the usage of extra intensive strategies.
Because the finish of World Battle II, authorities coverage has pushed yield maximisation. Because the toll this takes on the setting — when it comes to air pollution and soil injury — has turn out to be clearer, a rising variety of farmers are turning in direction of extra nature-friendly strategies.
We expect long-term as a result of we need to hand down our land to the following technology in higher situation than we discovered it.
My spouse and I took on our farm in 2008. We develop a wide range of cereals and lift cattle and sheep.
‘Make house for nature’ implies that farming and nature can’t co-exist, that one should give solution to the opposite — farming to rewilding. (Inventory picture)
However we’ve got additionally planted greater than 15,000 bushes and have a tendency 16 miles (25 km) of hedgerows, which shelter animals and crops from the wind whereas enhancing soil construction and offering a habitat for wildlife.
We work with Farm Web Zero, a Nationwide Lottery-funded challenge to enhance soil high quality, which not solely makes it extremely productive but in addition a wholesome setting for earthworms, dung beetles and micro organism.
These additional improve its fertility, which means we needn’t use such massive portions of synthetic nitrogen within the type of fertiliser.
How ironic — and tragic — if all the nice work carried out by farmers like me over latest years is undone by others being pressured to farm smaller areas extra intensively, somewhat than utilizing our nature-friendly strategy.
One other apparent and devastating consequence of giving up productive farmland to rewilding is that we must rely extra closely on meals imports.
Our nationwide self-sufficiency in meals has already fallen from 78 per cent to 60 per cent in 30 years. Rip out crops to make means for rewilding and we are going to turn out to be much more reliant on low cost imports from overseas, the place animal welfare and environmental requirements are a lot decrease than right here.
What’s the sense — or morality — in reducing our carbon footprint at residence, solely to ship it offshore by shopping for meat and crops from territories the place they don’t seem to be produced sustainably?
Below the Authorities’s future commerce offers, it’s proposed that a lot of our meat can be imported from international locations resembling New Zealand, the place farming is very intensive, by no means thoughts the carbon value of transporting it throughout the globe.
We expect long-term as a result of we need to hand down our land to the following technology in higher situation than we discovered it. (Inventory picture)
Low-cost imports will destroy the livelihoods of UK farmers. Our farms can’t be inexperienced if our enterprise goes into the purple. We’ll merely go bust.
And Britain can’t essentially depend on imports for ever. The populations of nations resembling New Zealand have gotten extra eco-conscious by the day and more and more resentful about sacrificing their very own setting to provide meals for nations like us.
In time, we must flip to international locations the place farming is extra reliant on polluting chemical substances, animal welfare requirements are nearly non-existent and environmental injury is just ignored.Locations resembling Brazil, the place rainforest is being systematically destroyed to make means for beef farming.
The UK Authorities’s ‘greenwashing’ might appease the inexperienced vote right here, however it’s disastrous in the long run.
Much better to take a balanced strategy — integrating farming and nature — than merely dumping our issues overseas.
If we turn out to be reliant on imports from international locations extra weak to local weather change than we’re, the place droughts and floods devastate crops or illness blights livestock, we are going to sooner or later face shortages.
Then we are going to rue the rewilding of our fertile, productive farmland, nurtured by a splendidly temperate local weather.
For it can’t be returned to agricultural use in a single day. For yearly we do not put money into agriculture, it takes seven years to get well that misplaced funding time. If you happen to plant bushes, for instance, their roots essentially change the construction of the soil for a few years.
And with native councils beneath strain to construct extra homes, you do not have to be a cynic to surprise how lengthy it is going to be earlier than a ‘rewilded’ space left to nature and smothered by brambles is snapped up by land-hungry housebuilders and misplaced each to farming and nature for ever.
Farmers characterize solely about one per cent of the citizens, and we’re busy from daybreak till nightfall. We do not have time to answer each new session and initiative the Authorities rushes out.
Our voices, and people of rural communities, have been drowned out by an unholy alliance of misguided — if well-meaning — inexperienced teams and vested pursuits. In spite of everything, carbon-offsetting has turn out to be large enterprise and pension funds are making massive sums from tree-planting schemes.
The Authorities should realise that farms could be the reply, not the issue. Farmers like me need to do the fitting factor for the planet and we have to do the fitting factor for our companies. Meaning farming productively, sustainably and environmentally.
As a small nation with a rising inhabitants, we should enhance our meals manufacturing, not quit on it.
Rob Halliday runs Cornish Valley Farming, on 450 acres, together with his spouse Louise and youngsters William and Isla.